i am tying to find the best way to orient an object on a plane, the object is a simple cube, and the plane is a wave modified subdivided mesh. its basically going to snap the cube to the plane, and rotate it so it is normal to the surface. is there a way to do this in blender?
if I understand correctly what you are trying to do, you should use the “retopo” tool. Here is a brief explaination of what is does, and how to use it.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Nicholasbishop/Using_Retopo
Good Luck!
I don’t think retopo is what he meant. Retopo would mould the cube to fit the wave on the subdivided mesh, whereas what you want to do is pick one face of the mesh, measure the angle of its normal and rotate the cube to match. There are various scripts, like the “drop to ground” script that do part of the job, but I don’t know whether drop to ground takes account of the rotation too… otherwise it could be something to ask in the python/scripts forum. I think it would be fairly simple to do with a script.
Select the face, hit Shift-V -> Top (usually, sometimes side or front work better), create the cube, and manipulate it in view axes instead of global or local. You can split a pane to get a second view from another angle, which can be helpful.
Hope this helps.
i dont suppose there is a much better example for what i am going for:
http://features.cgsociety.org/alienware/entry.php?challenger=94
@grasshopper: a script might be the way to do it, ill have to look into it.