I’m used to being able to select and hide polygons while creating models in programs like Lightwave and Modo. It is an essential function that I can’t imagine Maya lacks, yet there isn’t an obvious way to do this as far as I can tell. Is there a workaround?

AFAIK there’s no out-of-the-box way to do this in maya.

A possible solution is a script to assign a new material (with no transparency) to the selected polys (stacking the previous material in a list or var to re-assign when your one).

there probably is a better way, however im not aware of it at the moment

try pressing 'b'…
ldunham.blogspot.com

Hello there..
I just wrote a little script for you to be able to hide selected faces with a shelf button:

In this shelf you will find it, place that into your shelves folder.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25584030/shelf_PointlessScripts.mel

PS: This is a very very simple script, you need to create a shader with visibility set to 0. Ther script will look for the shading group called: lambert2SG - so make sure to name your invisible shading group like that.
You then just need to select tha faces you want to hide, and click on the shelf button.

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Thanks for the script. I will give it a try.

Adeptus-Astrates 07 April 2012 04:08 AM

Hello there..
I just wrote a little script for you to be able to hide selected faces with a shelf button:

In this shelf you will find it, place that into your shelves folder.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25584030/shelf_PointlessScripts.mel

PS: This is a very very simple script, you need to create a shader with visibility set to 0. Ther script will look for the shading group called: lambert2SG - so make sure to name your invisible shading group like that.
You then just need to select tha faces you want to hide, and click on the shelf button.

is it sane to write a python code and put it inside mel function, why cant you tell someone that you have made a python script and just give your python script..if u cant do it in mel…

Not too sure if this is what you want to do.

In your viewport, 4th icon from the right, it has a green dotted line with an mouse pointer in it. It is call Isolate Select.