Tutorials: The Very Basics, II

Comments

1. shepherd October 4, 2011 at 5:14 pm

   In regards to the Part 1 video. When you activate the “X” grid as you demonstrated, you can now freely move the object about on the “Y” axis constraining your movements to that particular grid. Now while you are doing that, are you also pulling & pushing the object in & out of space on the “Z” grid? When you activate the grid that’s perpendicular, are you in essence activating the 2 other grids at the same time? In this example, does it remain on the Y axis (thru activating the X grid) yet also move freely about the “Z” space?

2. Chris Tyler October 5, 2011 at 7:06 pm

   Ok, think of it this way. Imagine you are in a 2D application like Illustrator or Photoshop. The canvas uses a coordinate system, left to right (X) and Up and Down (Y).

   This grid allows you to move things in a combination of X and Y coordinates. So you can’t call it the X grid or the Y grid, because it lets you move things freeform along both axis.

   So we call it the Z grid in 3D space.

   A grid in 3D space allows you to constrain an action in a quasi-2D way. In fact we can generate custom grids that don’t adhere to standard axis.

   So the key here is that when a grid is active, movement is freeform, but not OFF the grid.

   If you want it to move off the grid in a perpendicular fashion, you have to either change grids, or you can specifically activate a perpendicular guide.

   So for instance, if the Z grid is active (freeform X and Y movement), press the Shift+Command keys. A guide perpendicular to the grid appears. Now you can grab the item and move it off the grid.

   It’s really not too confusing once you mess around with it for a while. It also gives you significant control over modeling complex shapes by controlling how your 2D mouse movements are translated into 3D space. That and how you can control the exact placement of 3D geometry relative to a grid.

3. Kanefire June 28, 2012 at 6:06 am

   In part 3 you target the object with the camera. The drop-down menu on mine only has the checked “none” option. How do I fix this.

   thx

4. Chris Tyler June 28, 2012 at 4:26 pm

   Make sure you have your object named. In the video I named my ‘Target’.

5. Kanefire June 29, 2012 at 3:00 am

   Thanks Chris. And it helps not to name an object a common name like “sphere”… That took a minute to figure out.