3D Modeling Tutorial #3 - Moving, Rotating, and Scaling

welcome to the third part of my 3d modelling series last time I gave you a very comprehensive look at standard primitives now let's go over how we move rotate and scale those primitives so I'll just go ahead and create a box and right-click I'll press J get rid of these now the first the first transform is move and that's available right here you can either manually click here select and move or you can press W so the three the four shortcut keys our q4 just select W for move e for rotate and R for scale now the reason you would use the D move rotate and scale - as you can see it says select a move select and rotate and then select the uniform scale so both the move rotate and scale tools can be used for just selecting but I would advise against that because if you use the cue button the select object mode however you select it it does not move whereas if you use this mode for example select the move if you select it and move your mouse a little bit you will end up disrupting the object or moving it just a tiny bit and this can be very um bad if your if you want if you want your model to be very precise and it can mess up several other things like symmetry and other kind of kinds of things that you'll be doing in 3ds max so whenever you just like the object model it I'll recommend using just a select object mode because if you use smooth rotate or scale you might end up selecting an object and accidently modifying it a little bit when you select it so w-4 move so we have three main ways of moving our object first of all we can use this right here this is called the transform gizmo it's got three axis on it X Y & Z in order to move it in a particular direction you simply hover your mouse over the direction you like to move it to so you can constrain your movements to the X Y or Z X simply hover over it let it turn yellow and then click on it and as you can see wherever I move my mouse right now I'm moving it up and down everywhere it's only moving in the X direction right and left positive values and negative values in relation to the grid and then of course if I just want to move it front and back I'll use the y axis and up and down the z axis negative values and positive values and for the y axis positive values and negative values so that's the first way you can also combine two different axis for example if I only want to move it on the X and y axis but that the Z I'll hover my mouse in the middle right here similar I can do the same thing for Z and X or Z and Y that's the first way the second way is we can right-click on the select and move icon this will give us a pair of coordinates X Y Z on the left and X Y Z on the right now your your object every object has a position in space in the in the space the 3d space XY and Z you can think of that as latitude and longitude with the added Z for height so as you as I move my box around you can see that the numbers on the Left change whereas the numbers on the right or a zero that's because the right is used to move in a certain distance and the left is the absolute position so if you want to know exactly where your object is located look on the left however if you'd like to move your object for example 50 50 centimeters you just enter 50 here and that moves with 50 centimeters to the right so the reason that this right part exists is so that you can move it a certain distance without worrying about adding or subtraction so if you know if right now for the x value it's negative eighty eight point one to four centimeters so instead of worrying what you know adding 50 or subtracting 50 would do I would just enter 50 or negative 50 so remember you can use positive and negative values so you can simply right-click that's the second method remember the left is the absolute position and for the right its relative position so relative to the center of the pivot if I in the third the third method is using these three boxes right here which of course are the same boxes as right here except it's located down here in the bottom for easy access so the numbers the numbers here XY and z are the same ones as right here X Y Z so I can simply right-click if I want to move my object to the center of the speak to the center of my scene to the center of my grid which I recommend for efficient modeling the best position to model your object is in the center of the scene so I'll go right here on the X and on these arrows I'll right click and for the Y I'll right click so right clicking on any of the arrows will reset your value to zero so that's a very fast way to move your object to the setter and begin modeling so what I usually do is I just go ahead and create my object real quick like and then right click right click and it's in the middle of course I can also click on the arrows which is a slow method I can click and hold and they can just enter in values as well now last time I told you that as you guys you're creating your object you can right-click at any time and that that holds true for the move rotate and scale tools if I'm moving my object and I don't like where it is I can simply right click oh and you can press control X for expert mode that will remove the things at the bottom on the right and you can simply model we're having you have more space to model more room to when you burn and this is the mode I usually use but it's a mode after you've learned all your hotkeys so right now I'm using expert mode by pressing control X so as a movement object around if I don't like the position while I still have my left mouse button held down I can simply right click and it will return to its original position so that's a very handy thing to use it's kind of like an it's kind of like an undo command except that only works while you have your left mouse button held down if you move your arm check and let go of the left mouse button right click on all longer work you'll activate this menu so I have to use the undo command control Z but if I click hold move and while I still the left mouse button held down I right click and that also applies for rotation and scale simply right-click at any time and you will move back to the original position it was that so that's the move tool the rotate tool was actively pressing e now for the rotate tool we once again we have three axes rotate this direction simply by hovering your mouse over the the circle let it turn yellow if in a rotate in all three axis simply have your mouse in the middle click and you'll be rotated in any direction but this is a very chaotic mode and I wouldn't recommend it but it's useful for quickly getting your object in the position you would like it to be so once again you can right click here when you have the the the two the pair of values X Y Z and X Y Z once again the left represent its absolute rotation values whereas the right resets to zero every time you enter something and once again you can simply right quick right click to quickly return your object to its original position and you have the same values you have them at the bottom right here so you don't always have to right click here you can quickly access them at the bottom right here now we have our scale tool which we can access by pressing R the scale tool is a few more options and other tools once again we can scale in a particular direction let me go ahead and switch to the box tool oops the mistake I made that time was I had my scale tool selected and I wanted to move the object to the middle so I right-click this and I'm disappeared because I said it's scale to zero the object still exists as you can see I've still got something selected but because the scale is at zero it's technically not able to be seen so I'll press ctrl Z to undo that and do the right thing this time and press W and then right click so funny things can happen if you quickly do something and you're not cut you you left the setting on and not quite sure what happens so just kind of kind of press control Z and find out what you did wrong so I've got my box and I can scale uniformly by simply hovering my cursor in the middle clicking and the box is now scaled in all three axes if I want to scale just in the one axis they want to make the the box flatter I'll just hover over the Z and there we go and same for x and y now when you've got the row to the scale to select it you can see on the bottom here I have the three boxes but only one is active the y and z boxes are not active that's because right now I've got the uniform scale mode right here you can switch the scale modes by pressing R or by clicking and holding here so the first one that's activated by the phone is the uniform scale that means that your object will be scaled in all three axes I'm not sure how to pronounce axis plural I guess X I all three X I I have to look that up anyways mostly mostly this right here at the top it changes the numbers it changes what numbers you can activate it does not change the transform gizmo the transform gizmo will remain the same whether you have uniform or non-uniform so you can see I switch to different modes but the the gizmo remains the same I can still move it in all three axes oxide now the second mode that now activates my y and z box is right here so here's what this looks like this this box right here you activate by right-clicking is like a type in box where you can enter in your numbers and be more precise instead of just doing it by hand or by by eye so you can see as I switch to it the numbers on the left are still there but the numbers on the right change so when I activate my uniform scale I just have one number here which is a percentage value so if I want to make my object 50 percent smaller I'll enter 50 here and now it's reset to 100 100 percent and I can just press ctrl-z like you file to make on object two hundred percent smaller I'll enter 200 here very simple to work with and if I change to the second mode and I have three numbers so I can make my object for example 50% smaller in the x-axis so that's how that works the third mode for scale is the squash mode select and squash what this will do is let's check it out what this mode will do is it will keep the volume of the object so whereas with the regular mode it will just be scaled here with the squash mode it will keep the volume of the object I never use this but you can see it has its uses it could be very useful if you're animating like a very cartoony exaggerated object or if your motto or if you're scaling an object that you want it to keep its volume like a balloon with some kind of liquid or air inside you want it to keep its volume you can use this mode or it's a very it's a mode that I never use but it's there if you need it so that's it for moving rotating and scaling it's quite simple I encourage you to play around with it and quickly switch from move I mean from select move rotate scale just quickly moving changing that around you can practice quickly moving your object rotating it scaling it just to make sure you get good at it and of course once also practice resetting the object is zero so to move the object back to the original to zero zero zero right click right click and to reset its rotation right click right click right click so practice that because it will really come in handy for lots of situations ok now I want to talk about the problems that transforming an object can cause one more thing and when you change to the move rotate or scale tool you see the transform gizmo but pressing the X button will cause it to disappear or change form at least in this form you can still move it around but you can't really constrain it anymore so lots of people who are just beginning they accidentally hit the X button and constantly disappear and they're lost and confused so go ahead and write down this shortcut as well so there's some keys and 3ds max that you can accidentally press and they will change the way the program works and people will be confused as to why the program is not working the way they want it to so if you don't see the transform gizmo and you're in the move rotate or scale tool try pressing X that might be the cause so moving rotating or scaling is called transforming when you do any of those things you are transforming the object now moving the object is not a problem but if you rotate or scale it that will cause some problems with your models or when you're modeling and let me give you an example of that so one of the tools you can use is a tool called the camphor tool that you use that with edges you use that to make the edges round and smooth let me give you an example of that I'll just press the camphor tool when you activate a tool you have two settings you can either do it by hand by eye so I select camphor I hover my mouse over here I click and hold however I never do it this way I always use the settings to the right of some of the tools you have this little box if you click on that you can enter in your custom settings here so for the camp for a mount I'll enter in ten or maybe like fifty and for the segment's I'll enter ten ten fifty ten so as you can see the camphor tool takes that edge I selected and makes more edges in the round fashion like this this or it looks like a nice round rounded edge okay let me go ahead and do that I'm going to go ahead and clone my object I'll tell you about this later I'll delete this and return my object to its original form now I'll go ahead and use the scale tool to scale my object and I'm going to go ahead and apply that same camp for operation 50 and then ten segments so watch what happens here as you can see it's not rounded like on this object because of the scale transform I did the camphor tool is now doing this and this is not what I want so I'm going to go ahead and click cancel in that command so this whole issue can cause problems with modeling it can cause problems when you are animating your your your scene animating your objects creating characters and type machinery and all that so for now I'm going to go ahead and simplify simplify the issue to in terms of what you need to know for modeling so if you end up rotating or scaling your model you'll have to do this I'll click your object click on the sixth tab here utilities you should see a box here called reset xform if you don't click on this button here on the top right you have three buttons here at the top more sets and this configure button sets click on that now here on the left you have a list of all the different the different buttons you can have here there's there's no limit on the buttons I've got the number here right now is 10 where I can set that to any number I would like and so you find what button you would like which command you would like to access for example polygon counter or if you do not have X form here find the xform modifier well here it is reset xform under the max standard and just whichever one you would like click and drag it over here to one of the buttons I've got this empty button over here so I'll click drag and stand put it right here and it and it appears there and now just click OK and now it updates anyways if you rotate or scale your object it's very important to come over here utilities click on the reset xform and then click on reset selected now xform is short for transform so when you are resetting your xform you're resetting your transforms so now go back to the modify tab and you can see an X form modifier has been applied here and I'm going to apply an edit poly on top of that while I'm dealing with right now our modifiers they deserve their own videos there's a lot of them and I'd like to go over I use most of them so I'd like to go over how they actually work there's tons of them so I'll have to make several videos to discuss them all for now just know that when you rotate and scale your objects funny things can happen and to fix that use the reset xform button anyways now they reset the xform you can see there's an x4 modifier here I'll click on edit poly so let's select that same edge camp for 50 and ten segments you can see now it's doing what I wanted to do now the camphor tool is working properly so that's what you need to do whenever you rotate or scale your objects and let me give you one more example so I've showed you how scale can mess up your object and make it difficult to model properly now I'll show you how rotating also mess things up okay so here's a plane this is what this is how I usually start things off with a plane and you know I'll go ahead and start modeling the plane like I usually do maybe some cutting here you know and I'm leaving this so I've now begun work on my object can be anything okay now I'll go ahead and I'll move this here and I'll rotate it like that okay now one modifier we have here is symmetry in your program you might not have these modifiers here you probably don't because these are custom modifiers not custom ones but ones that I've added here to make my modeling job easier by default these are not here by the font this is empty you can configure your modifiers by clicking on this button right here and then click on configure modifier sets and then you can have your custom custom list of modifiers here anyways one modifier we have access to is symmetry now you know you should know what symmetry those because you learn it in every elementary school so when I click symmetry what I want is I want what's over here to be over here on the Left I want this symmetry create I want I want symmetry to be activated so I click on symmetry and now now this happens the object let's see what it looks like in the front viewport f3j and press do you turn off the grid you can see what actually let's keep the grid on so you can see the problem the problem is I want the symmetry to add to be active right here in the middle and to have what what I have over here on the right to be visible the same way it's over here on the right I wanted to be on the left like a mirror almost but because I rotate it I create this problem right here so to fix the problem we do the same thing we did with the scale I'll go ahead and delete the symmetry I'll go here in the utilities reset xform reset selected the xform modifier is here I'll click on edit poly that's just a habit of mine then I'll click on symmetry and I'll set the symmetry to be at the exposition and it's now doing what I wanted to do it's now perfect symmetry symmetrical and that's because I fixed it using the xform modifier so that's very that's a very handy tool and now you can see as I'm modeling the symmetry is active and whatever I do on the right is mirrored on the left so X transforming your model your object with move rotate or scale is very useful but it does have its problems you can do it just as soon as you're done and you're ready to start modeling go ahead and select all your objects remember you can apply the reset xform to multiple objects so you can select multiple objects and then reset selected so you do not have to do it one at a time so I've showed you the problems with rotating and scaling but moving can have its problems as well so if I move this the object is now here on the right but let's say that I want the symmetry to still be in the middle of my scene at zero at zero on the x axis I can go here under symmetry click on this little plus here select mirror and now right here at the bottom I can right click at the x value and that will move my symmetry to the middle and then and then they can continue modeling it so keep these things in mind moving rotating and scaling is very useful for quickly getting your object in any position but if you're once you're ready to start modeling go ahead and use that x4 modifier or that reset xform one quick thing before I finish up here the xform there's an x4 modifier here and you can see it looks the same it looks the same the xform modifier we first applies right here and the new one is right here but these are different modifiers they don't do the same thing so don't be fooled by the same name the resetting the xform is different then applying an x4 modifier so just keep that in mind thanks for watching I hope you found this helpful please leave your comments send your emails and if you like this please subscribe and stay tuned for more videos thank you and take care

Channel: Arrimus 3D

Views: 38,898

Keywords: 3D Modeling (Film Job), Scaling, Tutorial, Animation, Autodesk 3ds Max (Award-Winning Work), arrimus, education, class, walkthrough, move, rotate, scale, intro, introduction, model, cg, cgi, 3d, 3ds, modelling

Id: ivswuEIaxFs

Length: 27min 29sec (1649 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2013