Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: NegspectahDek on November 17, 2005, 02:19:04 am
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Ok guys, here's a question. I'm building a round object that is made up of 3 sections that are identical. Is there a way to mirror the one section around the z-axis, sort of like im lathing it? Or do I have to clone the one section twice and and attach them the way I want?
Thanks in advance
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Ok guys, here's a question. I'm building a round object that is made up of 3 sections that are identical. Is there a way to mirror the one section around the z-axis, sort of like im lathing it? Or do I have to clone the one section twice and and attach them the way I want?
Thanks in advance
If I understand correctly what you want to achieve, you need Hinge From Edge. It is only available in Editable Poly mode. Here's an extract from the help:
"Hinging polygons rotates them about an edge and creates new polygons that form the sides of the hinge, connecting the selection to the object. It's essentially an extrusion with rotation, with the exception that, if the hinge edge belongs to a selected polygon, that side is not extruded. The manual version of Hinge From Edge works only with an existing polygon selection."
In case you don't know what editable poly is: it's only available in newer versions of max (max 7 has it for sure, don't know about 5 and 6), it's a different mode than mesh, but similar and more powerful. You can turn a mesh into a poly temporarily with the edit poly modifier. If you have an older version of max, then you're out of luck.
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Cnt he just duplicate, rotate 120 degrees around the z-axis then repeat?
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Yeah. Just turn on rotational snap, hold down Shift when you rotate your object 120 degrees, and make two copies.
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Yeah. Just turn on rotational snap, hold down Shift when you rotate your object 120 degrees, and make two copies.
ok, thats what I thought. I was aking because I used to use ProEngineer and with it you could define reference planes, lines, etc and mirror objects around or on them. So if you needed 8 spheres in a circle or 8 cuts in a circle, all you had to do was give the repeating angle and the axis of rotation.
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ah, that's accomplished using the powerful but difficult to use Array tool. It can make radial or linear arrays in up to 3 dimensions with one tool; the trick is getting the right settings.
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i usually do this in truespace the hard way. i make the segment and i rotate and copy all the virtices to the other two sides. truespace cant merge a bunch of sections without creating bad geometry so ya got to do it the hard way in there. i really need to find me a good manual on max.
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yeah, you can array along a spline shape (ie circle) or spline line. Haven't done it for ages though. I can find out how to do it if need be though. Dead easy to do IIRC