Hi All,

I was adding a new plane to my mesh (giving my shoes straps) and when I did the vertex data merge some if the faces disappeared into the foot mesh. Is there any way to pull them forward so they show?

There's always a way to recover a surface when verts get snapped together by accident. First off, is it too late to just use the Ctrl+X key to back up a few steps or load an autosaved backup of the mesh from before it happened? It looks like an extra vert or 2 got left selected when the C key was hit. IF you'll post a pic of the wireframe view I'll try to explain how to recover -- as long as there aren't too many verts involved.

It was too late at the time I'd posted - pretty much all of the vertex points had been merged for the straps. Fortunately I believe I can just duplicate them and delete the original - the duplicate shouldn't be vertex merged, right?

I'd be lost without the Vertex Merge (C key), but you do have to pay attention when using it. It isn't really useful unless the vert positions being copied are in different groups, and the mesh you're moving the vert(s) to is higher in the groups list than the vertex itself. They'll still get copied onto each other, but you don't have any control over where the verts will end up. Also, all selected vertices will get merged to a single point. 99% of the time you'll be working with 2 verts at a time. If you end up with verts snapped together that shouldn't be again, post a wireframe 3D view and I'll explain how to recover. It's really handy to know -- I have this problem more often than I care to admit.

I didn't have more than two vertices selected. It just seems to be the angle of the ankle that when I merged that last pair that one section went behind the other face. I don't think I need to merge them, they shouldn't affect the actual foot, right?

Merging verts isn't a requirement or anything, but you do have to make sure there are no gaps in your mesh. Leaving one surface behind another isn't a good idea unless its designed to be that way either. I'm dealing with some front and backfaces that are too close together right now. When viewed from a distance, the underlying surface "sparkles" where it shouldn't. If you have one face behind the other strange things can happen in the game, depending on how close together those surfaces are. If you have layered surfaces where you don't need them, it's best to get them back in place. Select the vert that's out of place and move it back where it belongs. With it appearing black like that, you might want to make sure the face isn't simply reversed. Deselect the "Draw Backfaces" option in the 3D view. If the black surface becomes transparent, that's what happened. When adding brand new surfaces to a mesh its easy to put them in with the verts reversed.

Oh, the black is actually the material - I wanted to see what it looked like with black leather straps.

So should I delete the parts of the foot that the strap is going to cover?

As long as it doesn't leave a hole in the mesh, sure. Whenever you can get rid of underlying faces that's the way to go.

Awesome, I'll give that a try

If the strap leaves the ankle area looking too blocky, you can also subdivide the faces to create another line where the new plane can bend. If the entire surface has disappeared inside the body, adding a few more surfaces will let you make the new strap conform more to the shape of the leg. Try this -- select the bottom-most row of polys on the leg and duplicate it. That will give you a nice round band to work with, and something already roughly the shape of a strap to go around your shoe. Move and scale it until it fits. Duplicating things is a pretty easy way to make new surfaces because the UV is already scaled to fit your model. A little tweaking is all it needs.