purple dot at center of model?

hi, i’m kinda new to blender & I met this problem while following the tutorial over here :
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Putting_Hat_on_Person

1.) I made the hat & the person, but I happen to made them in 2 different blender files. How could I sent my hat.blend file over to my human.blend file?

2.) I’m really confused about rotation from global axis & rotation from local axis at that link. How am I able to tell my local x, y & z since I don’t see any coloured lines ?

3.) From that tutorial it say that the purple dot should be in the center of my shape & if it isn’t I should follow their steps which is to

Important to note is that the shape will rotate around its origin, or center point, indicated by a small, blue dot that was created when you created the shape. It should be in the center of your vertices, but if it isn’t, there are a couple of ways to get it back. One is to go into edit mode, select all vertices, and move them around the center point. Another is use the LMB to put the cursor where you would like the center point, go into object mode and press the “center cursor” button in editing panel (F9). Or you could hit SHIFT+SKEY, select Selection > Center.

I did that but apart from the 1st method which is me manually moving the vertices to around the center purple dot point, all the other methods result in the whole model dissapearing the moment I did selection > center.

Thanks for helping out.

  1. Open the human.blend and use File Append menu to get the object from the hat.blend. (Browse to the hat.blend and then select what you want to get from it).

  2. If use press R to rotate, you’re gonna do a global rotation. However if you press R again, you’ll be rotating around a local axis. You can also see the word Global under the 3D view, which let’s you switch the orientation for scaling and rotating to Global or Local.

  3. Press F9 (Edit Panels) and you should see the Centre, Centre New and Centre Cursor buttons to help you get the Centre where you want it to be.

More info on the buttons/options can be found in the Manual in the wiki.

thanks, now for some extra questions if you don’t mind.

Any ways to make the local axis x,y,z to be the same direction as the global axis?

I found some redundant faces that could be merged with another face how could how I merge 2 faces ?

also would be erm…joining the head with the body so they appear as 1 unit. Currently my head & body are just seperate each with their own origin…

thanks

To match the local axis with the global axis, set the rotation of the object (in object mode) to 0 degrees for X, Y and Z. You could also centre the object’s point of origin using “Centre New” (to move the origin to the centre of the object) or “Centre Cursor” (to move the origin to the cursor location).

After doing this, enter edit mode and rotate the object: Select all the verticies by pressing the AKEY once or twice (depending on whether any verticies are selected), then press the RKEY followed by the X, Y or Z key, and, if you want to rotate along the local axis, press the X, Y or Z again. Do this for each axis until they match up. You can also enter a number for the rotation instead of dragging the mouse (literally, just enter a number and press the return key instead of dragging).

As for joining the head to the rest of the body, in object mode, select both the objects and Ctrl+J and press enter. To finish off, delete any faces that would be hidden and create new faces where they should be.

I hope this helps.

I don’t quite understand this part, would be better if you could explain in more detail sorry !

To change the object’s origin
There are three buttons (in the editing buttons, F9). They say “Centre”, “Centre New” and “Centre Cursor”.

-The “Centre” button moves the selected object’s verticies so that the origin is at the centre of the object.
-The “Centre New” button moves the selected object’s origin so that it is at the centre of the object.
-The “Centre Cursor” button moves the selected object’s origin so that it is where the cursor (the red and white ring with four lines, not the mouse cursor) is.

To match an object’s local axis with the global axis:

  1. In object mode: Press the NKEY and set all the rotation settings (RotX, RotY and RotZ) to 0.000.

  2. Enter edit mode (press the TABKEY). Rotate the object to its desired rotation:
    a) Select all the verticies. If any are selected, press the AKEY twice, if not, then only press it once.
    b) Press the RKEY.
    c) Press either: the XKEY (to rotate the object along the X axis), the YKEY (ro rotate the object along the Y axis), or the ZKEY (to rotate the object along the Z axis). To actually perform the rotation, you can either drag the mouse, or enter a number (followed by a press of the enter key).
    d) Perform “c)” until the object is in the desired position.

I hope this helps!

Any ways to make the local axis x,y,z to be the same direction as the global axis?

Crtl-a (apply size and rotation) in object mode sets the local axis to match the global axis.

GreyBeard

after trying both your methods, It worked for the human. but for the hat, the axis are still different despite trying both greybeard & techmelogy advice.

I guess I will have to experiment it more to find the solution thanks

=)

Clear all parents first – then do the ctrl-a and then re-parent. Sorry I should have mentioned this the first time.

GreyBeard