Remove Background Geometry

Support Modeling
1

Hello all. I am currently making a simple arena for a game. The way I went about doing this is creating pieces, duplicating them, then placing them on a grid floor (kinda like legos). I am now left with a 100k poly map (far too much for how it looks) and want to remove any unseen faces within the mesh. The map is 1 solid mesh.

The method that makes the most sense to me was to occlude all background geometry, highlight all of the surface faces, hide them, then delete the leftovers, then unhide and only be left with my surface faces. This does work, however I am having an extremely hard time selecting all of the faces. Alot of the faces are in tunnels and parts of ceilings and whatnot, and I simply cannot get a good camera angle on them. Aside from this, there is ALOT of them. I’ve tried hitting A to select all but it also selects the background geometry even when it’s occluded. I then thought to use wireframe mode but then background geometry cannot be occluded. Hitting B to drag-select does work, but I have so many angles and nooks and crannies… this is far too tedious.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to simply select EITHER all of the hidden faces/vertices in a mesh, OR all of the non-hidden faces in a single easy step. Even if there is just a way to view only the background geometry or only the surfaces, I really need to get rid of all the unseen faces in my map.

2

You know you can hit b 2 times , and get a circle select , Then scroll your circle big? You know about W key and swap select? I think there is no quick fix.

3

Go into edit mode. Turn on limit selection to visible. Box select the entire mesh. Then press Ctrl + I to inverse the selected faces. This selects all of the not visible faces. Then just delete.

Edit: Be careful though. Just tried it to reduce the poly count of Suzanne, and it can be tricky if you have folds on your mesh.

4

This is the problem though. I am having a very hard time selecting all of the faces even with box select. The camera angle is really to blame. As I rotate, other parts of my map get in my view.

I really need to find a way to select all faces while background geometry is occluded without using ‘a’ or box-select. If not, I need to find a way to only show the background geometry.

5

Move your background to a different layer.

6

I don’t understand what you mean by this? Maybe I have missed a tutorial? hehe

7

Select your background objects. Press m. Then click and number like 6, but not on the numpad. This will move your objects to layer 6. Which means when you have layer 1 selected, only the objects left behind will be editable and visible. Layer 6 will hold all the other objects.