Hello,
I am trying to do some cleanup adn reduction to data I recieved in FBX format (its 40+ million poly, 20k items … quite a complex data)
I would like to know if there is (after import of the hierarchical data with thousands of nulls and items and correcting some errors that are there on some parts) a possibility to merge it into a blank geometry node without the need to add one sop at a time .. or doing a physical merge of all the data into one node …. can I say .. .please look on anything that is parented to this null and merge me any geometry here?

Another question that has to do with this data is - if I have many separate islands of polygons, separated by narrow bands of missing polygons … is there any automatic way to fill in those strips of polygons? I tried a few but all need some intervention and the amount of data to be manualy selected is quite high … so being able to to do it without any selection or group making would be the best way if there one … I will then merge and reduce it to a very lowpoly state … but need to create the continuous shell to be able to reduce it well.

Thank you
Pavel

There is a recent script released that can help with your fist question. It is called Selection To Object Merge.
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/32066-selection-to-object-merge/ [forums.odforce.net]

You use the script by pasting the code into a new shelf tool that you create by right_clicking in an empty area on any shelf.

Basically select a bunch of nodes inside your FBX and colorize them to group them together. Then select all the nodes you want merged into a single object and click the shelf tool. A new geometry node will be generated that contains a bunch of object merges into a single merge. Each object merge will have it's material re-written to match the color of the node source. This is one way to condense all those copies of materials into a single material as well.

Once you have a bunch of nodes as a single node you could try standard fixup on those strip items you mention. Like Clean, Fuse, PolyDoctor, Polyfill etc…

Hi, I'm trying this out, and I always get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “Selection to Object Merge”, line 15, in <module>
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘destroy’

If I comment out line 15 I get an object merge that references itself as input (not working).

Any ideas? H17.0.

Thanks,
Jasper

I think what is going on is that H17 manages selection a little bit differently than previous versions. What seems to be happening is that once I issue a node create, it becomes selected, invalidating the user selection that was in place before you click the tool button. This cases the newly created node to become the selection and thus maps to itself.

I'll have to think about how to save the initial selection before further processing…

Ok, I have a re-write of the tool code that seems to work with Houdini 17.
You can pull the code down from the link again.
https://forums.odforce.net/topic/32066-selection-to-object-merge/ [forums.odforce.net]

Looks like something I could really use, but every time I try it I get an error

"print node.name()"

What I do is select some objects from an imported FBX I'd like to merge into a new SOP and click the the new tool I created in the shelf.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong ?

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn't the already built in shelf tool "extract" do this? Select the nodes you want to be objectmerged and then hit "extract" either from shelf or viewport. Ofc this does not have the automatic shaderhookup besides the shopmaterial attrbiute.

If you just want to import fbx into houdini without building a hierchy here are som other ways:

Since h19 file node can now be used to import FBX.

Also for characters the fbxcharacterimport in sops works. Slap down a bone deform as well to hook up rig.

Last but not least the agent sop node can import any kind of FBX.

Hey, thanks, but I just tried selecting some of the SOP's of an imported FBX and tried to "fetch" them. But all I get is an error when I try to place the object that's stuck to my mouse pointer.

I not sure, but when I check the docs about the Fetch node, it seems related to copying the transform of one object to another ?

What I was looking for is for a way to automagically merge selected SOP's in an imported FBX, so I don't have to manually add 30 objects to a "object merge" node one by one .

I know about the new character import thingy, but I need acces to separate objects.

My bad, for some reason I wrote the wrong name for the shelf tool. It is called "Extract" not "fetch". I edited my note to reflect this.

Great, 10 bonus points for you !!

Thanks.