CGTalk - Moving Components

ghempton

03-16-2003, 05:44 AM

I'm relatively new to Maya and I have a question about moving components of objects. Is there any way to move something, say a face, relative to itself (as opposed to relative to the world or the main object)? Like, it'd be nice if I could move a face along its normal line or something along those lines. I am able to do this on new faces created whenever I extrude a polygon face, but I cant figure out how when I haven't performed an operation on it.

Also, is there any way to store individual component history? Maya automatically stores transformations for main objects, but is there a way to store transformations--or just to edit transformations numerically--for components (i.e. vertices, faces, etc.)? This would be a big help. Thanks in advance.

Jozvex

03-16-2003, 06:09 AM

Originally posted by ghempton
Is there any way to move something, say a face, relative to itself?

Yes, with the face/vertex selected go to:

Edit Polygons > Move Component

Then you can move them along their normal etc, but unfortunately you have to keep pressing "g" (use last action) for each time you want to move a new selection that way.

Originally posted by ghempton
is there a way to store transformations--or just to edit transformations numerically--for components (i.e. vertices, faces, etc.)? This would be a big help. Thanks in advance. [/B]

I'm not sure what you mean. You know about the history section of the channel box right? So that you can edit/delete past operatons like extrude etc?

ghempton

03-16-2003, 06:43 AM

Thanks, thats what I wanted.

My second question regarded components and the main objects. When I select my main object, the channel box contains its history, as well as all the transformations with their numerical values. Is there any way I can select a face and see all of its numerical transformational values. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to move a face by a numerical value, as opposed to moving it by eye.

Jozvex

03-16-2003, 07:43 AM

Ok, well if you select vertices, you can see/edit their numerical positions by clicking on the "CVs (click to show)" that comes up in the channel box. But not for faces.

However, up in the status line in the last section there's an input box to move things precisely.

By default it's set to "sel" (quick selection), but if you hold down the left mouse button on it you can choose things like "Numeric Input: Relative". If you set it to that, you can type in the exact amount you want to move/rotate/scale something.

Example:

With the box set to "Numerical Input: Relative", select a face, then select the move tool and type into the box 3 0 0.

That will move the face 3 units in the X axis.

I hope that makes sense!

ghempton

03-16-2003, 06:33 PM

Thanks alot! The numerical input is kind of what I wanted, although not as intuitive as I had hoped.

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