Strange problem. Somehow I wound up with a mesh where there are number of faces that are 'stacked on top of each other. This causes severe problems as it does not sub-divide correctly using Sub-D SOP or sub-division rendering. What vexing, is that neither CLEAN or FUSE SOPs solve the problem. Even though the points are copositional, but belong to different faces, they are not fused nor cleaned. I have no idea how those polys became stacked, but am frustrated that something like this cannot be fixed using Clean or Fuse SOPs.

Dave Rindner

Hi David

In the case of the clean SOP, the problem is is that all it'll do is remove degenerate, fuse points or orient the polys. If you have more than one polygon on top one another then none of those things apply. The poly's are neither degenerate nor facing the wrong way, they just have the misfortune of lying in the same space.

As far as I know, the only way to get rid of these would be to use a blast or delete SOP. If you can't select them, then turn on primitive number display and type in the numbers by hand. Its a killer if there are lots of them though…

Cheers
Marc

oh, P.S. When modeling, try to never ever use the clip SOP. This is a particularly nasty piece of work when you care about not leaving open polys and random edges lying around. I've been bitten by it a few times and I've had to go in and manually remove all the left over bits that it didn't clean up.

Thanx. I did solve the problem using Blast. I just had to develop a quick and efficient technique to find which of the polys were stacked. There were lots of them and they were randomly distrbuted around cage. I still have no clue how they got there. I tend to keep tight control when I am modeling in Houdini. Such a great modeler. BTW I do use Clip SOP quite a bit. No problems with it AFAIK, so far.

My suggestion for cllip tool is that either replace or complement trim SOP, by adding second input for closed curve or another object. So that clipping is not just done on a plane but constrained to a profile shape. Like a cookie cutter.
THX for heads up.

Dave R