copy just the surface?

[Anonymous]

So I have multiple objects in the scene, its a weapon comprised of several parts. All the parts are touching. Is it possible to select all the objects and create a single object of just the outside surface area? I know I can go through and connect them peice by peice using boolean but the polys are off so it starts to distort my objects when the peices connect. I dont want to just group the objects I only want the shell so I can use pepakura to flatten the single object out.. Thanks in advance.

Jessie

[Anonymous]

Make all the parts editable polygon objects, if they aren't already.  Select one of the objects, click "attach", then start picking your other objects.  This will make all the objects into sub-object elements of one single geometry.  Then, as long as all the border edges are touching in close proximity, and the vertices are aligned, you can simply go into vertex subobject mode, select all vertices (ctrl+A), then do a proximity weld (weld), and adjust the threshold until the vertices that are aligned to each other are welded together.  Or, apply a vertex weld modifier, and play with the thresh param.

The key is to be sure you modeled it to match up (same number of edges/verts, with verts aligned and ready to weld).

[Steve_Curley]

Won't work unless you remove any polys where the 2 elements are touching. Try it with 2 simple Boxes first.

[Anonymous]

Right.  There can't be any polygons between the verts you intend to weld.  The objects you are welding together would need to be open-border, non-manifold.