Home

Lectures

Selecting and Transforming Objects:

Page 2

E-mail Billy.

The most basic way to do this is to click and drag on the object in a viewport.

If you need to be more precise, you can enter the transformation manually by right clicking on the Tool Icon in the Toolbar. This brings up a window which allows you to enter either new absolute co-ordinates for the object (changes it's position in relation to the World Co-ordinate System, discussed later), or enter offset amounts (offsets the object in relation to it's current position).

A slightly more complex aspect of these processes is the use of the Axis Constraints:

When transforming an object, it is necessary to decide which axis you wish to transform it on. When using the View Co-ordinate System, which is the Max default, the axis will be as follows:

x : horizontal plane

y : vertical plane

z : depth plane

The View Co-ordinate System is relative to whichever view is active.

So, in practice, this means that if you try to use the Select and Move Tool with the axis contraints set to XY, you will be able to move the object up and down and left and right within the active view.

If you set the constraint to X, you will only be able to move the object left and right.

If you set the constraint to Y, you will only be able to move the object up and down.

With the Select and Rotate Tool, the same principles apply, only you will be rotating around the axis as opposed to moving along it.

With the Select and Uniform Scale Tool, you cannot constrain the axis, as by definition, Uniform Scale means to scale the object uniformly along all the axis. The other options contained within the Select and Uniform Scale button, however, can be constained to particular axis. These are Select and Non-uniform Scale, and Select and Squash, and will be covered in a later Lecture.