Mask & extrude a tilted mesh; align tilted mesh for projection master

[thenoob]

I used insert cylinder to put these two onto my subtool:

I now want to extrude their respective outward caps. Ctrl + click with transpose tool does not mask the rest of the cylinder of and due to the cylinders being tilted in 2 axes, I cannot mask them properly to commence extrusion. How would you go about this?

I tried it with transpose tool and the white circle, but to no avail. Also clicking (with transpose tool) onto the middle vertex does not seem to give me the correct normal, i.e. the transpose line does not follow the direction of the cylinder.

Tried the white-circle alignment method on this one too:

But no matter how I click and turn, the mesh is tilted. I want this frontal circular piece to be perfectly orthogonal to my view as to use projection master on it, while having the basemesh which is only partly visible in this image aligned vertically, that is its Y standing perfectly upright.

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[beta_channel]

as for the masking. Just mask it from the side, should be fine.

as for making your Z axis on that face the camera, probably not going to happen…in Zbrush anyway.

You could take the object in question into Modo and align your workplane to that face, or use the fancy new plugin (xformer 2.0) for max to do the same. It is probably possible in all the other software, but I can’t think of a way to snap a view titled on more than one axis

[Doug_Jones]

Shift+ ctrl+ click to hide rest of mesh(assuming you have groups), then transpose to new location. Could work, try it and see.

[thenoob]

@beta_channel

As the cylinders are also tilted in 2 axes I cannot get them to show from the side perfectly, that’s why I cant just use a masking frame.

Do you recommend Modo over other modeling packages for polygonal work?

@Doug Jones

You mean for extruding? I don’t have groups and have trouble creating them, because of said alignment issues.

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I managed to align the circular shape to the view by rotating it. As this moves the subtool rather than just the view this is of course a very suboptimal solution. I still hope to find a better way and cannot really think ZBrush would lack such a basic feature.

However: Once in Projection Master is there a way to draw a rectangle (with alpha) from the actual middle rather than just guessing where it might be, just to get a skewed result over and over again when one reaches the border of the shape that is being edited? In this case a circle: It won’t look very mechanic/artificial if the mid-point is off.

Move precise hard-surface work to other packages? What do the pros say?

[Doug_Jones]

Yes, I mean for extruding. You might have to split the masked parts after insert or make them as needed first and then insert them afterwards. Group by Normals should do what you need

[beta_channel]

I prefer modo for modeling, but it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. Blender is just as fine and costs $0, Max/Maya is fine too and costs $4,000. All really comes down to what you want/need/can afford.

As for the masking Doug is mentioning, you can use the lasso selection brush which will allow you to select edge loops/rings and create polygroups that way, probably exactly what you need from what I can see.

To draw from the center out you need to turn on square and center in your stroke settings.

[thenoob]

Thanks for your opinion, I guess I’ll just try out more modeling kits!

Selection lasso does the trick, thank you!

I know about square and center, what I mean is the middle of the mesh. So in my case I got this circular shape/cap of a cylinder with quite high subdivs. I want to draw out the alpha-rectangle from exactly this cap’s middle point. Polyframe does not help if the mesh is in high subdivs (which are needed) and sadly using local symmetry and radial symmetry to at least closely approximate the center point is not available in projection master.

Bonus question:
If I want to extrude a cylinder but have no cap or just a “close holes”-cap with lots of triangles but no correctly placed center point - how do I extrude or scale from the central axis? If I don’t the cylinder gets deformed in a manner not wished for:

[Spyndel]

I assume you’re having problems because you’re trying to perform these operations on an object that you’ve already inserted into another tool, and perhaps rotated in the worldspace? The cylinder you’re working with doesn’t seem too complex. Might it not be easier to simply model the cylinder object first as its own tool, where everything starts off perfectly centered and you can make use of deformation operations as well as transpose, and then insert it into the other tool once you have the results you want?

[beta_channel]

Lastly, Scale with Symmetry scales based on world center, not from the point it should. It worked…a long long time ago…v3.1 I think. I don’t think that has worked properly since that time.

As for selecting the dead center, yeah, you’re better off not rotating your objects until you’re happy with their location. I block most things out in world space, and then move anything over complicated to the center of the world to work/rebuild. Or I just make it in Modo. 4r7 might change some of that workflow though.

[thenoob]

So I’m not bound to work the pieces first, then move them into position as suggested to do earlier,
but can move them to the world center (with object Y = world Y etc. , I hope)?
How do I do that?

[Doug_Jones]

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?188693-How-can-i-find-the-Pivot-Point-in-Zbrush-4R6&highlight=Set+pivot