I have noticed that default vertex MERGE command is very aggressive. Would it be a way to fine tune it? something like a Merge tolerance, or threshold setting...

If not... what would it take to have something like this?

Emilio

Scale the model until it is really big, merge it, then scale it back to its original size

Vertices within a half quant radius will merge. Half quant is a lot for this and I've suggested numerous times for it to be reduced drastically (to something more around 0.1). Anything finer in precision than 1/16 of a quant has little meaning so that should be the minimum. There is no way for it to be changed or any threshold to be set.

Using the scale tool is very inaccurate - avoid using it as you will pretty much never get the original size again. You can get close, but it won't be the original size. When joining models along a seam, never use the scale tool for any reason as it'll cause misalignments.

Another alternative tho a pretty lengthy one depending on the amount of vertices you needed merged would be to select two vertices at a time and use weld instead of merge. Will take longer but you wont have to worry about merging vertices you dont want together.

Thanks all for the replies.

Scaling a model up is a nice idea at first thought, but unfortunately there is not a numeric way to do this (I could easily scale a model 2.0 and then go back to 0.5, but not by dragging the mouse!).

The models in question have a lot of geometry needing to be 'merged' so doing it by hand with Weld is also not viable.

I think there should be a 'merge' and 'weld' tolerance in a future version. Shouldn't be so hard to put that in the preferences.

In the meantine, two things are helping:

1) Vertices are merged in animation frames. So, if I can make a frame in which the Merge will not 'close shut the mouth' or 'stick the fingers together', provided that I can spread the fingers apart and open the mouth by rotating the bones in that particular frame.

2) Instead of <select all> and <merge>, it's best to use the <mesh tester> in vertex mode: it will select all the vertices that are 'open meshes'. I can then MERGE them.