Hello, I’m new to the forums and Blender as well, although I’m familiar with Maya. I’ve posted a similar question in the Blender.org forums, but, I thought I’d try here as well. I have a basic question about adding objects to a scene. It seems that whenever I add a new object (say, a cube mesh, or a NURBS sphere) the axes of the object seem to align with the current viewing angle and not with the world space (i.e. it faces the direction I’m looking and not aligning with one definite set of axes in the space). Is this normal for Blender, or is there an option I can toggle so that adding new objects acts a bit more like adding objects in Maya? Thank you for any light you can shine on this!
get a recent build at http://www.graphicall.org/builds/index.php
there is an option for doing exactly that in the preferences
plus a lot of other goodies.
Yes, this is default Blender behavior, though as pointed out, there is apparently a new option that will let you disable it.
A workaround that doesn’t involve downloading a development build is to select your object after it is added and press Alt-R. This will clear the rotation of the object. Alternatively, you could split your workspace and leave one view set to top view (Numpad 7) and then place your mouse over that area when you add objects.
Clearing rotation and scale with Ctrl+a is time honored standard advice to anyone finding that objects do odd, unexplainable things when animated. It’s almost as common as recalculating normals when a render shows odd black patches.
It’s nice to have a toggle to force object axes to conform to the global axes. Until that’s released, it’s Akey to select all objects, ctrl+a to line up all object axes with global.