NOTE: this plugin is no longer needed - selecting surfaces with the same material can be accomplished by right-clicking over a palette button and selecting "Select surfaces with this material" from the popup menu. To find the material index of a surface, click on a surface (to select it) and read the text at the bottom of the main AC3D window.

Select Surfaces With Like Material for AC3D

Released under the GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.

Download Windows version 1.0.1
Download Linux version 1.0.1
Download source code

* NOTE: The Linux version was compiled and linked on a Gentoo x86 install using gcc 3.3.6. If this does not work for you, the source code has been proven to compile/link under Linux, so you may wish to download the source code and compile for your system.

Selects all surfaces in your document containing the selected material(s).

This plugin and code are freely distributable

AC3D versions prior to version 5 have not been tested with this plugin.

History

Mar 13 2006 (version 1.0.1)

Fixed: no longer selects surfaces of hidden objects.

Sep 19 2005: Released Linux compile of plugin, courtesy of AJ MacLeod.

Installation

Copy the selmat.p file to your AC3D plugins folder (for example, if using Windows, C:\Program Files\AC3D5\plugin) and (re)start AC3D.

You will find the "Select surfaces with like material" menu item under the "Tools" menu.

Usage

Select one or more surfaces (your selection may contain any number of materials). At this point, selecting "Tools -> Select surfaces with like material" will cause all surfaces in your document that contain the same materials as the current selection to be selected.

Example

I'm using a free model of a vase of tulips downloaded from 3dcafe.com for this example. This model comes in a 3DS file, which imports as a single object with varying materials.

Perhaps now I want to texture this object with different textures for the stems, bulbs, and vase (which will require separating them into new objects). Or maybe I want to easily pull the tulips out of this vase, or even just apply a subdivision level to the vase as a separate object. Because the stems, bulbs and vase have different materials, I can do so using this plugin.

We'll separate the bulbs first. First, in Surface mode, select a surface with your desired material

Next, execute the "Tools -> Select surfaces with like material". This saves me a good bit of tedious selections against small polygons.

At this point, you can use Surface -> Cut Away Object if you want to separate the bulbs into a new object. Note that I could have also selected part of a stem at the same time, and both bulbs and stems would be selected here.

Enjoy!

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All content Copyright © 2006 Dennis Hawthorne, except where explicitly noted supercoldmilk © 2006 Dennis Hawthorne