How to combine 2 meshes without cutting them?

[zeroChaos]

After exploring meshmixer a bit, I found out that I couldnt import two completely diferent meshes at the same time to combine, without having to cut one of them.
 If theres already a way to do this, I sincerely would like to know. If not, then it's a good topic for the wish list

[RMS]

Is your goal to attach one mesh to the other - IE, you have some surface, and you want to use another mesh as a 'part'?

This is possible but tricky to do. It is briefly described here:   
   http://www.meshmixer.com/help/tips.html 
under the parts section. Basically you have to set the UVs of the part mesh, so that there is a nice boundary loop in UV-space.
I am working on a tutorial and maybe a way to do this automatically.

[zeroChaos]

Well, I'm not sure if I got it, and neither if we are speaking of the same thing. Lets just clarify things. What I want to do is combine two diferent meshes. As an example: lets presume I model a body and a bull's head(thinking in one of your models ), in 3ds max, and want to join them in MM for some reason. There's no way to import them at the same time, right? But I don't want to cut a part of my model and drag it to the library to be able to then open the other mesh and combine the part with it. It would be nice if we could import things directly into the library. But I'll keep trying to understand that uv thing, and thanks for replying by the way.

Cheers.

[iggie]

I tried to do this too. I think the added parts need to be cut out correctly to allow the mixing to work.

If you want to do any-shape joining you could use booleans or volumetrics eg: http://www.curvy3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1881

[zeroChaos]

@iggie, that would be indeed a solution, but the only problem about these methods, specially about booleans, is that they often create very unclean meshes, with very messed up topology.
Even though, thanks for the reply and tips, an apologies for creating problems more than solving them

[iggie]

I've seen volumetric meshes produce very regular quad topology, with a uniform spread of verts - just right for highpoly deformation/painting.

I am impressed at the smooth regular size triangles meshmixer produces - I know booleans can make a mess with shards and tiny polies all over - yuck! I hope meshmixer carries on in development and produces an easy workflow for the 2 mesh join...

[RMS]

zerochaos, if you send me the mesh you want to put in to the library, I can probably show you what the UVs need to look like.
(I really need to write a tutorial for this... )

[Ghartanker]

Well, to try to speed things up in the comunications; do you guys know the TECHSMITH software called JING?
I'll be a lot faster than writing a tutorial since you can record thge screen with voice naration and it's free.
Only thing is that you are limited to 5 minutes recordîng per session.
Hope that helps
www.techsmith.com

[RMS]

I have written the tutorial:     http://meshmixer.com/help/tut_makeparts.html