I'm about to do some fairly complex modeling all over again, and it would help to be able to clean up some edges just to simplify things as I go (my stuff usually ends up being a polygon mess - too many extraneous edges). And when I merely select the edge, and hit delete, it takes away the polygon it's sitting on as well.

Thoughts? Any and all ideas would be appreciated.
-Lew

I couldn't find a way to do it, so I had to quadrangulate the faces...

I take too much for granted when I'm working on Cinema. If that happened to me in Maya I could simply delete the edge. If I do that in cinema I get a hole on my model XD

Bingo! ;-)

Yes, I'm watching the Gnomon DVD "Vehicle Modeling for Production" with Paul Schoen - and yes, he does that often. As I'm thinking of my models up to now, there is always a bunch of edges I could just plain delete that are doing nothing for the finished product other than making more polys for C4D to render.

It may just be something C4D can't do, so I just need to plan my cuts better.
-Lew

If you want more control over just one area, use Melt from Structure menu :)

Tihomir

Just select the offending Edge and go to Structure > Dissolve. You can even select loops of Edges, both a single loop and multiple, and delete them using this command without destroying the mesh. I have the Dissolve command mapped to Shift + Backspace -- very handy!

nemirc: If your whole model gets deleted when you hit Backspace/Delete, make sure your cursor is inside the Editor View! If the cursor hovers inside the Attribute Manager you will delete the selected object, if it's inside the Material Manager you will delete the selected material and so on. It's a sometimes annoying feature of C4D ;)

/Anders

'Dissolve' is a special feature of the R11, right? I use R10 and I just had a look but couldn't find that command in my structure menu.

To get rid of edgeloops with earlier versions you can also do the following:

1.) Select all the unnecessary edgeloops.
2.) Convert this selection into a point selection (you'll understand the reason why in a second...).
3.) Now switch back to the loop selection and use 'melt'.
4.) Switch once again back to the point selection and just delete all the selected points.

That's a very clean way do delete loops and all of their points without destroying the mesh.

Ooops, you may be right that it's an R11 function, didn't think about that!

If you guys are still on R10 or below you might want to consider a very affordable plugin called SpinPoly. It's only $10 and I still use it with R11 (old habits die slowly ;)

/Anders

Just use the Melt command!

Adam

Well, I agree in case  it's just a single edge but you can't just use 'Melt' in order to get rid of a loop as it will only delete the loop itself but not the points.
I may be mistaken, but that's the way I understand it.

Thanks for the link Anders, that's a nice plugin.

You can remove multiple edges and loops with Melt but it leaves the points. Dissolve will delete the edges as well as the points so there is no clean up (Optimize) needed.

/Anders

In the example above, only 2 triangles need making into one quad, in which case Melt will suffice, and there will be no extra points.

Adam :)

Thanks folks!

Yeah - the above example was made last night - just made a cube, gave it basic division, and made an edge to illustrate a "useless edge" - sometimes describing things doesn't quite do it.

And also - yep, and sorry for this - I didn't explain that I'm still using 9.6 - haven't been able to afford the upgrade yet. Thought I was going to last month but that didn't happen (obviously).

The actual general messes I want to clean up are fairly dense sets of edges - sounds like (while still using 9.6) the switching back and forth between points and edges using Melt and deleting the remaining points is my way to go.

Thanks again-
-Lew ;-)

Here is a way to use dissolve in versions previous to r.11. Its great script made by tank from 3Dattack :)

Just copy/paste this in Script manager, assign the hot key and you set :)

if(!instanceof(op, PolygonObject)) return;
var bc = new(BaseContainer);
var dbc = new(BaseContainer);

bc->SetData(MDATA_CONVERTSELECTION_LEFT, 1);
bc->SetData(MDATA_CONVERTSELECTION_RIGHT, 0);

SendModelingCommand(MCOMMAND_CONVERTSELECTION, NULL, op, bc, MODIFY_ALL);
CallCommand(ID_MODELING_MELT_COMMAND);
SendModelingCommand(MCOMMAND_DELETE, NULL, op, dbc, MODIFY_POINTSELECTION);

WOW - okay, for complete loops it works perfectly!
For individual edges it deletes polys too - but this is a huge help for what I usually want to do - thanks!
-Lew

However - just tried Melt for individuals - thanks again - works great even in the middle of a poly (not just point-to-point edges to delete).
-Lew

Quote - Ooops, you may be right that it's an R11 function, didn't think about that!

If you guys are still on R10 or below you might want to consider a very affordable plugin called SpinPoly. It's only $10 and I still use it with R11 (old habits die slowly ;)

/Anders

I have R10.5 and it has Dissolve in the structure menu

Steph

thundering1: I also use Cinema 9.6 and find that select points and weld works good enough to git rid of unwanted polygons.

When cleaning up imported meshes, I've found deleting the polys with extra edges, and using Close Polygon Hole cleans it up nicely, too.

While I COULD just make another object this shape, it would be nice to be able to just extrude this shape like he's about to do.

And I don't want to either learn or pay for Maya... I'm loving C4D just fine.

-Lew

You want to add cuts like that ?

Use knife (line mode), uncheck "single". Cut edges like you draw with pen.

Select those edges and use "Edge cut", add necessary points with it.

Finally use "Slide" to place those points as you want perfectly aligned to surface.

Though it would be nice to be able to add points on surface like that :)

Tihomir