The deal is I want to move and duplicate the object along surface (polygon which I Make Live first) but I want the object to rotate to be let say always 90 degrees to surface. I was trying to find something like align or snap to normals but I didn't (would be the best solution)
Maybe there's some other way to do this, or some simple option to choose from menu.
Would be nice if I could choose the desired angle or even more parameters of snapping to make duplicated objects a bit random - tree modeling.
I haven't found anything like surface constraint in Constraints submenu. And PaintScriptTool is I think far above my current level, Idon't Script MEL at all and I don't plan to.
I've found something else working while searching Help topics. The Idea is to Contraint the object to desired surface with Geometry Constraint and follow this operation with Normal Constraint (some properties must be changed to work as desired)
That pretty much works for me, but any other ideas are welcome.
you dont need to, they have actualy doen this allready all you need is to type in the object you want to paint grid size randomizing factors wethere or not you want to caostrain and paint away, the demo is there you can directly use it (the manual has intructions for its use)
Oh sorry i meant normal costraint do this make the object normal costrained on the surface. Make it live, now when you move the object it orients along the surface then jsut copy it along the way. Note copy has a nasty sdeeffect off selecting the copy wich isnt costrained so insetad of normal copy its faster to do it.
with this code snipet, as it mekas moving and copying easier not sany rocket science here (just to make it a bit more user firendly):
run it for the first duplicate from shelf or whatever (just drag the text to shelf and itll be a button) then jsut keep moving and hit h to repeat that command after move, move hit h move hit h
After couple of tries I brought this to work, much better indeed, thanks a lot.
Using Geometry and Normal constraint would be good as well but when I duplicate constrained object the duplicate isn't constrained any longer. When setting duplicate option "Duplicate Input Graph" to ON the duplicate becomes constrained as well and this would be perfect, except it's not visible in renders ;( ?!?
I think snapping and transforming objects in relation to each other is one of the most difficult things to figure out in Maya. It's not very clear, and it seems quite a proccess involved.
Even scaling/rotating a simple plane in relation to another plane seems a nightmare. I wasn't even aware that you need to make objects live to snap to them.
you dont need to make live, if you make a object livve it act as a z imput for yyour operations otherwise the creation takes place on the visible grid. Its a additional snappng tool.
As for scaling in relation to another plane true the scale tool does not have this but you can use mel to generate a empty gooup that oriented like the plane group the to be scaled under it and scale. Or you can use a laticce or bone (i reecently posted about thiis and mead e script to automate it)
However, i find that while XSI has this function built to its tools, i never use it for anything. Its just one of those workflow things that i never need go into. As i work in different order. so i find this a woirkflow organizational thing. as opposed to aessential tool, nice to have no need to have tough.
