Cutting off half of a static mesh

[ajgilzean]

Hello all. Quick question here coming from someone very new to modeling and udk. I have a static mesh that looks perfect in my environment, but half of the mesh is unneeded and goes through the other end of a wall. Is there a way to just cut off the portion I don't want?

[CA99]

You can (in your 3D modeler) use boolean subtraction, taking the model (as part A, assuming this model is solid and has no holes) and a large cube/box (as part B) positioned so that one of the sides of the cube acts as the plane amongst where you want to cut up the model, and apply an A - B boolean on it. You could also simply delete the vertices of the side you don't need and cap up the resulting hole. On the other hand, you may want to have a hole in place if it is unnecessary and will never be seen. (i.e. The support of a wall-mounted lamp; you do not need nor want any polygons that go inside a wall and are never seen to be visible.)

On the other hand, re-usability is something to think about. Even if making a, say, upright trash can that never moves (no physics applied), you want to keep the bottom polygon of the trash can if there will be another instance of it that's rolled over.

As for doing this in UDK, I'm pretty sure that's not possible, but I could be wrong.