I know the subject prob. makes no sense, adn I hope I can explain what I’m trying to figure out, so here goes…
I’m using the various modeling tool zscripts that allow you to switch to a top/front/right “view”. Yes, I come from a 3D application background, and I’d like to retain as much of my workflow developed over the years as possible.
The problem is, I’m having a hard time understanding how rotation trqansformations are applied and stored to objects when they are created.
For example, I create a sphere3D object by clicking and dragging on the canvas. I want the poles to be at the “top” and “bottom”, so I use the deformation tools under the modifiers pallet to rotate the object where I want it.
That is, I want my front view to have the poles at the top and bottom. I want the x-axis to be right/left, y-axis to be up/down, z-axis to be in/out.
The problem is that when I choose the top/right/front options on various modeling tools, it rotates the object so that it is positioned as it was wehn the object is created. That is the “front” view has the sphere3d poles looking at me rather than on the “top” and “bottom”
I know that somehow I’m getting screwed up because of the interplay of global coordinates and object-relative coordinates. In my mind, the X-axis is right left, and if I rotate the object around in XYZ space then want to constrain to the X axis, I want it constrained to the X-axis relative to the screen plane, not the object. Help?
Next…
Another problem is that when I rotate an object around, it seems that all transformations, symetry etc. is in object space, not a global space. Is there a way to rotate an object to a position that I want it in, and then tell zBrush that I want the object to change it’s local coordinates and rotation values to a world-based value.
Example: I create a sphere3D, rotate it so that when looking at it from the front, with the z-axis going in/out of the screen plane, it’s at a 45 degree angle, turn on X-sym, the mirrored dots will be at a 45 degree angle (the one on left will be above the one on the right). I want to tell zbrush," OK, I’ve rotated my object into an arbitrary position, and now I want you to forget the stored rotation value for the object, reset it, and reapply a global/world system. So that now when I use X mirrored symetry the red dots are directly across from each other. Please tell me that this makes some sense to someone.
