Well. I’d say it will be sad for some of us, good for others, some won’t care about it, but hey, as long as there’s an alternative way to get what we want i think it’s all fine.
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I used the surface tool a lot for cutscene and where the camera is facing. Welp is one solution, and that is to use decals.
Like many others have said here, I used the Surface section in Properties to tell which way a part was facing so I could make functional cameras, interactive objects, etc. I think this was an oversight.
All the other ways to tell which way a part’s surfaces are facing are far more clunky than what we had before (I understand it wasn’t the intended use).
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Horrible update 
How am I supposed to tell which surface is the front surface now??
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You make a plugin to do it. Showing part orientation was obviously not the purpose of this feature in the first place, and doing this yourself is relatively trivial.
Here’s a plugin I wrote quickly to fill in the gap now that part surface types are finally on their way out.
I was annoyed at first that they were removing ability to easily to see part surfaces so I decided to try and make my own plugin. It currently features the ability to select faces and directional vectors for multiple parts simultaneously, and doesn’t require you to have them currently selected to show the faces and vectors (using locked selection).
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I am disappointed in the surfaces tab being removed from the properties window. Whilst I can understand the removal of old surfaces such as hinges or motors, it is now annoying to set surfaces to Smooth or Studs by having to use the tool in the models tab. As well as this, it’s harder to see a specific face / direction of a part - although this isn’t exactly an elegant solution, it should’ve been considered when removing the tab and added as its own feature beforehand. Plus, developers following tutorial videos become confused when trying to find the tab in properties.
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To add onto your point, I think I would be really helpful if there was a new “Show direction” option in Studio that displays the front, left, right, back, top and bottom sides of your model, part, mesh or whatever. This would remove the need for surface for this.
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Great, now I can’t tell what direction a part is facing. Thanks, devs, got rid of something that people used for reasons you didn’t expect, and now we have a worse product as a result. Classic roblox.
I literally only used hinges as a way to find the front of a part (hint hint: important when building if you want to do cframe related things later on.) and that’s plfltlfltpt dead now. Judging by some replies I’m seeing, I’m not the only one. Seems out of touch to not add in a solution before removing something. But that’s just ROBLOX’s typical development method I guess.
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The amount of spacebar heating in this topic is real.
Just use a plugin to view part faces, or file a feature request to make part orientation more clear. Physics constraints aren’t meant for viewing orientation.
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It’s not spacebar heating, it’s an example of
Roblox didn’t provide a simple way of finding the faces of parts by easy visualization, so developers, naturally looking for shortcuts used hinges to visually guide them and very easily turn them off. We’ve done this for years. This is the actual user experience.
They want to provide a “singular Studio building standard”
Yet,
So what is it?
Do developers constantly have to develop new plugins to make their own studio better, while newer developers lose ease of access as Roblox narrows down to a “singular studio building standard”
Edit: Feature Request
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This is not a good alternative this takes way too many clicks for when I just need to quickly check which way is front. Roblox should just have a checkbox somewhere we can click to display the front face.
To make this work I need to click on the part, click the insert object button, search for the adornment, insert the adornment, set an adornee, change the face, and then depending on the size of the part I have to change the SizeRelativeOffset property or else I wont be able to even see the arrow.
With the old system all i had to do was click on the part, scroll to the surfaces section and click the face i wanted, boom. done.
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It is useless and problematic to remove a function that studio beginners learn to use in their first steps, also this helps and complicates life much less for those builders who do not know scripting, this is also in all official roblox tutorials. About surfaces,(Its a old, but very useful feature) So, why remove them? You want to make life difficult for builders like me who don’t know or understand almost anything about scripting? Because it seems like you want to do it… @kleptonaut Im wating for your answer
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Sure its not, but it was definitely the easiest way to do so. If there was another easier and more efficient way to view each surface of the part, no one would be here complaining since we would be using that method. Yet there isn’t. So even if it wasn’t meant for viewing orientation, it was still the best way to do so, and removing that feature as you can see has been a setback for many.
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How do I remove all legacy surfaces on my model? I’m trying to convert a Power Wheels thingy I made a few years ago to a new chassis using Constraints. But I have to get rid of all the legacy surfaces. How do I do this quick?
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I gotta be honest, I think this change was long overdue. Motors/Hinge SurfaceTypes were nice but now HingeConstraints seems simpler.
Glad I finally switched over.
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I don’t like how the Surface section of part properties have been hidden. I used this section a lot to check which side of a part I was looking at, and it was very helpful for me in all kinds of situations when I needed to know which face was the front etc. I’d love to see the surface properties unhidden.
Does the plugin work with studs and inlets? So can I use it to convert studs and inlets to valid WeldConstraints instances?
The racing community thanks you for this. Many of these people do not want to learn to code just to make a car move. 4 wheels, one part, and a vehicleseat has been their source of joy for years.
However I worry about the fact this only says existing VehicleSeat cars. From my interpretation of this, someone who goes out and makes a car “like the old days” is gonna run into problems, and they might not find this thread to help them understand why.
The VehicleSeat is still a nice way in my opinion for a developer to create a car with all platforms automatically working. I really do wish it was looked at some more to fix some of the weird issues it has… Also the automatic camera with VehicleSeats is a pretty effective one, however, it doesn’t quite work as good on Console as it does on PC. Quite unfortunate.
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