I’ve been looking for a way to add an object (let’s say a circle) to a certain face of a complex object (thus a “rotated” face).
Selecting the vertices of the face and using the snap menu let me locate perfectly the object in the center of the face, however I can’t find a way to rotate the object so it gets aligned to the face normal.
I have found a script from Theeth (which I haven’t tested yet, I will tonight) that “apparently” will do this for me, however I wonder if there is another way I might be overlooking.
It would be really cool to have some “Object -> Normal” option in the snap menu. Don’t you think ?
I have tried alternative methods that work in special cases. For instance, if the face belongs to a sphere, you can add a Track and then remove it keeping the transformation, or create a vertex at the face center, parent the object, make dupliverts rotated, make them real,erase everything except the one you need, and voilá, but it’s a little long at least…
I suppose a nice way for this kind of tool to work would be similar to parenting an object to a face. We would select both objects, enter edit mode, select the vertex of the face, and then call the wonderful snap menu “Obj->Normal” option
Here’s a workaround that might do the trick for you.
In edit mode, elect the vertices of the face(s) you want to have your other object align to.
“Pkey” to separate the selected vertices from the original object.
In object mode, select the object you want to align, then shift-select the newly-separated face(s).
Ctrl-Tkey to create a track. Use the animation buttons to control which axis of the object you want tracked to the face. This should immediately move the object’s axis to be aligned with the separated faces.
Ctrl-Pkey and select “clear parent and keep transform” so your alignment “sticks.”
Select the separated face(s), then shift-select the original object they came from.
Ctrl-Jkey to rejoin the selected meshes.
In editmode, Wkey “remove doubles” to rejoin the face to the object.
Yes, it’s a workaround, but it does work!
Also, if you wanted to animate this puppy, you could duplicate the face before separating it, then make it invisible (“Env” button on the material for that object ONLY) and parent the original object to it. Now it moves invisibly with the main object, and your second object will track to it throughout its movement.
(Assuming you are using either Blender 2.28c or a recent Tuhopuu2 version)
[>] Add a mesh UV Sphere: 5 segments, 5 rings ,
[>] Pick a face (one with 4 vertices) that you want your circle to lie upon), Activate Rotate/Scale wrt Median point Cursor mode (Second of the group of four buttons in the 3DWindow header)
[>] Press Shift_s > Cursor to Selection,
[>] Activate Scale/Rotate wrt Cursor mode (Keyboard period/dot [ . ] key)
[>] Select the 4 vertices of the face,
[>] Press Shift_v, then select Align view > To selection (top)
[>] Add a circle, set the number of vertices, and scale it down to fit inside the face.
Also, if you wanted to animate this puppy, you could duplicate the face before separating it, then make it invisible (“Env” button on the material for that object ONLY) and parent the original object to it. Now it moves invisibly with the main object, and your second object will track to it throughout its movement.
“Env” won’t work in this case. You’d need to set alpha to 0, with possibly the ZTransp button. “Env” would black out the part of the model behind it.
Intrr - I’ve tried shift V many times but it doesn’t seem to work right at all. The view always ends up angled and either gives you a profile view of the face you’re trying to align to, or a view who’s vector is not normal to the face. Perhaps what I’m looking for is a “align selection normal to view” feature…
Hmmm. I just tried it, it seems to work perfectly. The only thing it maybe doesn’t align “as you expect it” is the view axis itself (which goes from your eye into the view), meaning that the view is still rotated around its Z (depth) axis…
I had the same issue as Desoto: it works fine for simple objects, but as soon as you try selecting just one face of a complicated object, it gives you strange unexpected angles…
hmmm, I think I found the source of my problems!!! The post about adding the object in orthoganal view was the hint I needed: it wasn’t that, since I had actually done that, but I guess all the messing with the object later got things muddled…
If you do a ctrl-A (apply size/rotation) to the object (outside of edit mode), then shift-v starts to work again!!!
Fixed and commited to Tuhopuu. I’ll commit it to BF when the interface makeover is done, I don’t want to slip commits in when heavy work is being done on the code.
are overlooking shift-v (align selected to view)