Can I get the contents of all the models inside of a model?

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#1

If I have a model, and it has parts (and more models with parts) inside of it, how could I get all of these descendants?

Short question, sorry!

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#2

You can use :GetDescendants().

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#3

What I am trying to make is a GUI that follows my mouse (I know how to do that), but since I check for an instance inside of the object I hover on, right now it just checks for hover.Parent["instance"] and not hover.Parent.Parent["instance"] etc., I could check if the parents exist, and keep checking through them but idk if it will be effective.

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#4

Doing that is more effective than using :GetDescendants(). You’re fine I’m sure

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#5

I have this, but it doesn’t seem to work very well…

local function checkParents(t)
	local a
	if t.Parent ~= nil then 
		a = t.Parent
	end
	if not a then
		a = t.Parent.Parent
	end
	if not a then
		a = t.Parent.Parent.Parent
	end
	if a:FindFirstChild("HumanoidRootPart") then
		return true
	end
end

^ I just realized this is written stupidly and makes no sense xD, trying to realize how to sort this out

#6

This script is over complicating things. Try and name your variables something meaningful as well, it’s a good coding practice and will help you if you need to debug longer scripts.

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#7

You can also use :IsDescendantOf(). This function checks if the part is a descendant of another part. So in your case you could probably do:

local a = t:IsDescendantOf(parent)

This will return true, if “t” is descendant of “parent”. And will return false otherwise

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#8

This doesn’t really solve it, because how can I get parent properly?
I must still check it until I get to the ‘character’


This shows that what I hover over, is a model inside of that character.

#9

So the ‘character’ is the parent you want to find? What is the character? A player character?
It looks like the character is an NPC, if im understanding this right.
I think you would be able to use “workspace.NPCs” instead of “parent” in above example

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#10

I do have my NPC inside a folder in workspace already, i’ll try that

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#11

But since IsDescendantOf is returning a boolean value, how can I use it to determine what I even select?

1 Like
#12

It just checks if one part is descendant of the other part. You already know both parts when matching them in IsDescendantOf. In above example i use “t” and “a” as the parts. I hope this makes sense

#13

I am back to point 1, where I needed to just get the actual model of the NPC…
Sure I can check if it belongs to NPCs and stuff but getting the model itself within all of the parts and models inside it…

local function checkParents(t)
	local a = t:IsDescendantOf(workspace.NPCs)
	if a then
		return true
	end
end

					if checkParents(mouse.Target) then
						print(mouse.Target.Name)
					end

#14

Ah okay. Then instead of matching the part with the NPC folder, i would match it with every NPC in a for loop. And then return the NPC that it matches. Like this:

local function checkParents(t)
    for v, i in ipairs(workspace.NPCs:GetChildren()) do
        if t:IsDescendantOf(i) then
		    return i
	    end
    end
end

This would return the model if its found, or nil if not.

2 Likes
#15

Wouldn’t it lag much if there were many NPCs to go through, or not because it only checks for 1 out of all?

#16

Other than this question, that’s seems to be my best solution as well :smile:

1 Like
#17

I don’t think it will lag. Unless you of have thousands of NPCs. You can check the scripts performance while playing, by pressing F9 and clicking on the “Scripts” tab :slight_smile:

1 Like