Why are there hundred of sets in the outliner and can I delete them?

[Anonymous]

Hey Guys,
the last months I have worked on a model, and I'm now at the hierarchy stage, where I organise the outliner. This is the first time I'm doing this, and I'm pretty knew to maya. In the bottom of the outliner are hundreds of set, like pasted__set132, set1029 or wall_left_01:set1153. After some research, I found out, that sets can be created for quick selection, right? I tried to delete them, and nothing else happened, which is a good thing. Though I was wondering if there maybe is something in the background I can’t see, which I'm destroying. So, I undid the step.

I heard, that if I assign simple materials to different parts, Mari will create selection sets, which will make texturing a lot easier. Am I destroying this feature if I delete these sets?

[daunish · Accepted solution]

Delete them. Sets are just references to other parts of your scene. They don't actually hold any geo of their own (in some cases they can hold attributes).

[Anonymous]

So if I delete them, and import the model into mari, will I still have the automatic slection sets from the assigned materials?

[daunish · Accepted solution]

Deleting the Maya selection sets deletes the Mari selection sets. If you plan on keeping the selection sets you created in Maya, you will need those in your scene when sending them to Mari.

However, Mari creates some auto sets when a model is first brought in. Material and shell sets are created every time. So I believe deleting these sets in Maya won't affect Mari. But I could be mistaken, this would be an easy test. Delete your sets and send your model to Mari to confirm the auto sets are recreated for you.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the answer, I will try that 🙂