In Part 1 of this series, I showed a view of a model that had an overload of edges on display, distracting from an otherwise compelling view.

In Part 1 I showed how to get rid of obvious edges, like those along the curved walls, using the Eraser tool plus the Shift (or Ctrl / Option) key. Now we have to take care of the entourage edges: benches, trees, lamps, etc.

Editing each of these components and finding edges to hide is pretty tedious. So I’ll use an extension to ease things up: the must-have Selection Tools. You can get this extension in the Extension Warehouse (see our post on finding and installing from the Warehouse). Selection tools enhances your ability to select and manipulate specific types of objects. Tedious clicking is reduced to mere seconds.

Selection Tools

I’ll start with the lamp component. Inside the component, I select the entire object (faces and edges). I then right click on any face and choose Select Only, which brings up a menu with TONS of options. From those options, I’m choosing Edges. This results in all edges selected, and no faces.

With all edges selected, I right-click on any of them and choose Hide. (It can be tough to right-click on just an edge, so you can also choose Edit / Hide from the main menu.)

Now all edges are hidden, which occurs across all identical lamp components.

(Another option: you can select the entire component and use the Soften Edges window to remove the edges. This takes a bit longer, but you get smoother faces, no segmenting.)

This process is easily repeated for the bench and tree trunk components. The result: a cleaner image without the distracting edges.