I have this problem in Lightwave 7.0 that''s driving me crazy. I''m trying to create a house. I have a box alright, and extruded a triangle on top of it to make a roof. As anyone should expect, I want to give the four box''s surfaces a name like "Walls" and the four surfaces of the roof a name like "Roof". I press q to bring up the surface dialog while I have selected the four box surfaces, and for some reason they have been marked as "Roof" already. If I select "Walls" and don''t select "Default Surface", nothing changes even if I press OK. If instead I select "Default Surface", the other remaining surfaces will be changed to "Walls" from "Roof" as well, even though they were not selected. The same thing happens the other way round if I select the roof polygons first. I can''t remember how this all started (what surfaces I had named what at first) and can''t start this whole thing from the beggining (I have other objects in other layers as well). Could this be a bug, or something that is caused because of my geometry? I''m rather inexperienced with Lightwave so any views would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

Select the polys you want to be the roof. hit "q" and name it. Make sure "Make Defalt" is unchecked. Do the same for the other parts.

Lamont G.
CG Artist
Chula Vista CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

That''s the whole problem. Normally, when I select q and enter a new surface name it is saved for the surface, and if that name already existed, the surface automatically takes the settings assigned to that name under surface editor. In a particular model, selecting these specific polygons and changing their name has no effect (they stay under "Default" name no matter what I type) UNLESS I choose "Make Default", in which case however all other models that were default change to this new name and I can''t change them back individually.
I know it sounds weird but that''s how it is... Anyone with a similar problem?

I need to see because I still can''t really grasp how you can''t have unique surfaces.

Lamont G.
CG Artist
Chula Vista CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

Are you editing on a scene or object basis? Make sure that''s not checked.

Because if you have 2 files with the same name for a surface and it''s set on "scene" then all will be changed. If you have it set to object, it will only affect that single file. Surface names apply for the file, it''s not on a per-layer basis.

Lamont G.
CG Artist
Chula Vista CA
http://www.digitalweapon.net

Thanks for your interest Lamont. I managed to correct this problem, by performing the Triple polygons command on the specific polygons (convert the polygons to triangles). I don''t understand why this corrected the problem, so any input would be welcome, but I just write it here in case someone else has the same problem sometime.