The 3D manipulator system, first introduced in AoI by the PolyMesh plugin has many different modes and uses. When transferred to all mesh editing operations, its use have been simplified and some of its less obvious features have been ignored. For the moment, though, the original PME manipulator still keeps its whole set of features. Depending on user feedback, they will or will not be retained the next the PME manipulator gets revised. Anyway, here is the full set of features as it is now!

Basics

When you make your first PME selection, the manipulator that appears in the editor window looks like the image below.

Each color is representative of an axis : blue for X, green for Y and red for Z. There is also a gray sphere at the center of the manipulator, it represents the manipulator position. The basic usages of the manipulator are move, rotate and scale. To move the selection, grab the gray sphere at center and move it around. Alternatively, you may want to translate the selection along X, Y or Z only. In this case, grab the handles that bear the axis letter. Next to this handles, you can see diamond like shapes filled using the axis color. These are scale handles. Grab one of this handle to scale the selection along the chosen axis. Please note that the center used for scaling is the position of the manipulator as marked by the gray sphere. Finally there is the rotation of the selection which is achieved grabbing the relevant circle and moving the mouse along one direction (or the opposite) to rotate the selection clockwise or anticlockwise.

Pretty simple, eh? Now, on to not-so-basics mode.

Special modes

These modes don't change the behavior of the editing operation but they modify the way they behave. The first modifier is the Shift key. Shift-translate constrains translation to steps equal to the grid subidivisions. In the same way, Shift-rotate constrains rotation to steps of 5°. Finally, Shift-scale scales in every direction rather than just the handle direction.

Additional features

These are more or less important features which can be achieved using key-mouse combos. One feature common to all handles is the possibility to specify a value for the editing operation. What if you want to move along X by 1.43? or scale by 0.66? Or rotate by 7,3°? In this case, Ctrl-click on the relevant handle using the middle mouse button. This activates the value slider on the right. You may then use the value slider or the value field above it to enter a precise value for the operation.

Then there are features specific to each handle:

• Ctrl-clicking on a move handle brings the view so that this particular direction comes out of the screen. This can be a quick alternative to selecting 'Front' in the view orientation drop down list. Ctrl-shift click brings the direction inwards rather than out of the screen.
• Ctrl-clicking on the scale handle scales the manipulator instead of the selection. Use this feature if you think the manipulator is too big/not big enough.
• And no, there is no special feature specific to the rotation handle!

Center Handle

The handle at manipulator center does have a life, too. You may remember it acts as the center for scaling operations. And sometimes, having this position at the selection center is very annoying. Actually, you'd wish to have this special position set on a vertex or at the center of a face... WIth the PME manipulator, you can! Ctrl-drag the handle over special locations and you'll a magnetic effect set the handle on these positions. Depending on the editing mode (vertex, edge or face), these positions are:

• The vertices
• The edge middles
• The face centers

ManipulatorS

Yep, in fact there are several manipulators hidden behind the one you see by default. Two, to be more precise. These are toggled using the W key (default binding you can change in the Preferences window). The first manipulator that appears after the default one is the UV manipulator. It is a 2D manipulator that works in the view plane. It's called UV because it works along a plane. The handles work as before, except you can see a third scaling handle along the diagonal of the UV axis system. This one is used to scale both along U and V but using different scaling coefficients for each direction.

Pressing the W key again, we toggle into Normal manipulator mode. Sometimes you wish to move/scale/rotate using an axis system aligned with the normal to the current selection. In general, the normal defines inward and outward, so it's definitely the manipulator to use if the editing operation you have in mind is related to inward or outward direction (like: I want to move this set of faces outward). The axis are renamed N, P and Q. N is the normal to the selection, P and Q just happen to be two directions perpendicular to it and have no special meaning.

The Normal manipulator

Leave a comment

Only registered users can leave comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4