hi, this has always been an obstacle for me in max cause i’ve never found a proper solution. i’ll start off with an image:
-- image removed by tarzan --

its a track with autogenerated uvs brought in from alias studio/showcase <3.
the mesh you can see can be optimised to half the polies because of the subdivision on every surface element. i plan on doing a multires to do this, and need to maintain the base vertices (selected in the pic).

the only efficient way of me selecting these vertices (its a long weaving track) is to apply a uvw unwrap modifier which gives me a linear layout of the mesh, from which i select the verts i want (to use as base vertices).

problem is i cant find a way in max to ‘save’ this sub-object vertex selection; if i collapse the stack with them selected, i lose them in editable poly sub-object. if i add multi-res to the stack i lose them in multi-res sub-object.

perhaps theres an even better more accurate way to get rid of this sub-division pattern. (bear in mind this is a ‘dumb’ mesh imported in, so although its editable poly, all polies are tri’s)
can someone point out an obvious solution that’ll make me slap myself.

thanks!

Have you tried with a selection set?

Smart selection trick with the unwrap btw.

Eddie; Sorry, that won’t work. Stupid suggestion..

Would it work to go to the Epoly, select an edge, Loop, then Ctrl-Click the Vertex SO button to select the adjacent vertices?

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

wow chris you did it!
i can’t believe that existed in max, it’s one of those secret shortcuts that you find in windows that makes life so much easier. kudos to you for solving it.
i tried the selection set technique beforehand, it doesn’t work, as selected verts in the uv edit mode are tied to that mode, collapse or go to a different stack and the selection set doesn’t exist.
thanks for your support guys

-- image removed by tarzan --
heres the track being rigged for san andreas :p

i just selected borders, and then went to edge mode an deselected ends.
sadly the multi-res modifier doesn’t work the way i need it to anyway. i also tried selecting all the vertices running through the middle of the track, and clicking remove.. but max can’t rearrange the polies in a smart way at all when doing this..
unless there is another way i guess im stuck doing this horrible job manually for every giant section.

..but once you have the center lanes selected, couldn’t you just delete them and re-bridge the edges?