Two axis scaling in Ortho view

[paga]

Former Max user needs to know how to scale objects on two axis at once

[stebbing]

The move tool lets you control click on the axis that you don't want to translate. Unfortunately the scale tool does not have this same functionality.

So here is a simple work around.
Suppose you want to scale on the x and z axis but not on the y axis. You can do this by locking the y axis in the channel box. (Right click on the y axis and from the menu choose "Lock Selected".) Now when you scale the object it will only scale the unlocked x and z attributes.

After your done make sure that you unlock the locked axis. An attribute in the channel box is locked if it is darker gray.
--randy

[mikedin]

Phew,

I have looked everywhere for that tid bit of info.

Many thanks,

But I have noticed that you cannot do this by 'locking' CV's etc. in the channel box while scaling.

Would you suggest individually adding a cluster with a lock on one axis to these? Pretty time consuming still.
e.g. selecitng a nurbs cube with several divisions and scaling up every other set of 4 CV's along length in 2 axis's.

Thanks again,

Jason

[campbell]

it was stupidly large oversite, until 4.5, where you finally have the same behaviour as transform.

now if only tranformational snaps would respect the manipulator axis constrain state. dang it. to be able to snap w/i a plane, not 3. 'course you can do afore mentioned locking of trans channel for transform nodes, but its of more use w components (and the problem you've noticed - their trans channels dont lock, unless you do some extra poo). perhaps even a constrain to an ortho view pane you were snapping in would be ok? sigh. simple things should have simple solutions .. as they would in their coding implementation no doubt, these are things the users should hammer in the wish lists - oversites/functionality that are easily sorted. it is nice in 4.5 you can retain component spacing when you do snaps, is good. more please! and more transformational frames, like selecting a component out side your selection to be used as a transformation reference.

so until you lay hands on 4.5, yeah, using clusters/lattices is a method, cumberson, but you can script-automate it easily enuf. then you'll find that the scaling axis isnt oriented how you please, so other stuff (rotate both base and def lattices, or add another tranform oriented as desired) if your polys, suss polyMoveComponet, and scale using channels in channelBox. search the forums and you'll find a bit on this.

g.luck!

[joojaa]

Ive been having this on the list of todoo things for a while but sice the workaround is o simple i haven made the time to do it.

If anyone with time would make this context.

[campbell]

had a quick bash at it, but unfortunately you can only query the default active handle state for when you enter the ctx, ....if only you could query the currently active handle state ... any ideas?

[joojaa]

hmm.. maybe expanding the marking menu found under yje keyboard shortcut could be the next best thing?!? But i seem to think it sends the context a note of this so it could probably be querried...

[campbell]

manipMoveCtx only has -ah, activeHandle as the relevant thing to query, and this flag is only to set the default active handle for when you enter the context (Move's). what were you thinking about? another ctx thats part of the manipulators? a superCtx that watches active handles? perhaps its just one of the hardwired interface ctrl?