Purpose: To introduce the common Select Tools and methods of editing a Polymesh.

Objective: To become familiar with Points, Edges and Polygons and the basic tools to edit them.

Transforming Points, Edges & Polygons

A model is made up of a series of what are called faces. A face is a surface between 3 or more Points. A Face in most instances is also synonymous with a Polygon. The lines or Edges that surround a face essentially connect the neighboring polygons into what is known as a Polymesh, aka Model Mesh, aka Mesh. The corners of a polygon/face are called points.

Points, edges & polygons can ALL be transformed via the same Transform Tools you have been using. So let’s try it out.

Points

  • Create a New Scene and enable shading in the Camera Viewport.
  • Create a Polygon Mesh Cube via the Get > Primitive > Polygon Mesh > Cube.
  • Select Point from the upper right hand side of the MCP.
  • Drag a selection box around a point on the cube; it will turn from blue to red indicating that the point has been selected.
  • With your point selected, use the Translate tool, (V), to move the point as we previously moved entire objects – along a XYZ axis (or Origin box) of your choice. Briefly experiment with translating the point to varying positions and Navigating around in the Camera to observe the effect.

Next let’s try out the scale tool, (X), on a group of points.

  • Select your Cube and delete it using the Del key on your keyboard. Then re-create a fresh cube from the Primitives menu. Select the Point tool from the MCP, Hotkey (T).
  • In the Right Orthographic Viewport, press the (F) key to frame the Cube in the view. Next drag a selection box around the 2 top points of the cube (we are actually selecting the top 4 points of the cube), and press (X) to activate the scale tool.
  • Any of the handles of the scale tool can be dragged at this point, however lets drag the yellow Origin point to the left to shrink the top of the cube inwards uniformly.

Now let’s try out the rotate tool, (C), on the same group of points.

  • With the same points still selected, activate the rotate tool and transform the top of the cube around.

Scale Tool

Rotate Tool

Note: A group of points can also be selected individually without the use of dragging a box around them by holding CTRL.

Edges

  • Select your Cube and delete it using the Del key on your keyboard. Then re-create a fresh cube from the Primitives menu. Select the Edge tool from the MCP, Hotkey (E).
  • In the Camera Viewport select an upper left edge of the cube and press (V) to translate the edge inwards to create a slope.
  • Experiment transforming the edges with the translate, scale, and rotate tools. As well, try selecting a few different edges while holding CTRL to modify multiple edges of the cube at once. Notice, by doing so you will achieve different results then if you were to transform each edge one at a time.

Polygons

  • Finally, Delete and recreate a New Cube.
  • Under the Main Shelf we created in Module 1, click on the Selection tab, and select the Raycast Polygon icon. Hotkey (U).

Note: Though we can select Polygon from the MCP panel on the right, as we selected Point and Edge previous, Raycast Polygon selection is a more user-friendly tool to work with. We will return to Polygon selection in a later module.

  • The Raycast Polygon Tool will allow you to select any face (polygon) of an object with the simple click of a mouse.
  • Editing a polygon face is similar in many ways to editing a group of edges at once, for obvious reasons (a polygon perimeter is defined by its edges). Also observe that you cannot drag a selection box to select multiple faces of an object. However you can left click drag over multiple faces, in addition to holding CTRL to select multiple polygons.

Note: You can drag select many points, edges, or faces in one drag box, however all points in the box will be selected, even those we cannot currently see (on the backside of our object). To only select what you can see, utilize the Raycast Select tools from the Main Shelf.

Rectangle Select versus Raycast Select

There are 2 ways to select a point, edge or polygon – Rectangle Select or Raycast Select modes.

Rectangle select mode allows you to drag a selection box over an object to select many points, edges or polygons. However in doing so, you will select ANY point, edge or polygon that is on the backside of the object that can’t see. Raycast select mode will not allow you to drag a selection box over an object, and will hence only allow you to select what you can see. Both modes have their uses and it is recommended to become familiar with both.

Rectangle Select Hotkey Review

(T) = Point mode

(E) = Edge mode

(Y) = Polygon mode

Raycast Select Hotkey Review

(I) = Edge mode

(U) = Polygon mode

Lasso Select Tool

The Lasso Select Tool (F8) is the only exception that will allow you to draw a lasso around a group of edges or polygons in Raycast Select mode – or points, edges and polygons in Rectangle Select mode. The Lasso tool is mostly beneficial when in Rectangle Select mode, as the standard box selection may be difficult to use in some situations.

For the remainder of this Module, and to wrap up day one, students should exercise all the tools, hotkeys and principals they have learned. They are the buildings blocks for everything that follows. Here are a few exercises to practice:

A Few Misc Model Editing Tools

Snap

From the MCP, the snap icon will snap our model (or points, edges and polygons) to greater points in our scene, as well as the grid. This can be showcased easiest in the Orthographic views. Spend a few moments practicing with the Snap Tool.

TIP: Hold CTRL to temporarily disable snapping.

Snapping in Translate modes

Try holding ctrl or shift while in translate mode when working with points, edges or polygons. Notice how you can either snap to larger grid points, or more precisely edit a point.

Practice this technique for a few minutes to observe the difference between holding ctrl or shift while translating a primitive object.

Match Translation

To match an objects XYZ position to another objects position, select the object you want to relocate, click on the TRANSFORM menu in the MCP > Match Translation > and with the PICK icon that appears, select the object you want to move the currently selected object to.

This is a fantastic technique for moving objects around a scene that need to be in similar positions.

Isolate Selection

To isolate a selection (hide all other objects temporarily) select Isolate Object from the view’s camera icon.

Note: Press X (upper left key) to bring the objects back into any viewport.

Exercise 1:

Create a Morning Star object.

  • Starting with a primitive sphere, enter Rectangle Select Point Mode.
  • In the Right Orthographic view, frame your sphere and zoom out a decent length.
  • Drag select the far right point of the sphere and translate it to the right about 6 major grid units, do the same for the far left point and translate to the left about 6 major grid points.
  • Now do the same for the top and bottom points, and drag them up and down respectively, about 6 grid units.

TIP: Hotkeys are essential here. Primarily you will be using the T, V and S hotkeys to enter point mode, translate tool, and toggle navigation mode – respectively.

  • Now to continue, we need the in-between angles to be translated. To do this accurately, in the right orthographic view, select the origin (yellow box) of a point in-between the top and right side points. By selecting the origin point in the right orthographic view, we can drag the point at an upwards angle to the right.
  • Do the same for the upper left side of the sphere. And again for lower right and left side points.

Spend as much time as you need to line up all the points in a shape that is pleasing to you. Ultimately, your end result should look something like this:

  • Now since we are working in 3D, let’s move to the front side view and repeat these steps, however before we do so, let us enable the Symmetry button (Sym).
  • Select the far right point in the sphere and drag it to the right by 6 major grid points.
  • And finally do the same for the lower right side of the sphere.
  • From here, return to object select mode and press X to scale the entire object. We want the oblong circle in the center to better resemble an actual circle.
  • Now let’s adjust our Sym axis’ to be applicable to the Right Orthographic view. Right click the Sym button and select XY.
  • Select the 2 points on the right side of the sphere that are close to the inner circle, but not quite touching. Once selected, press V to translate, and drag the Blue Arrow towards the center circle. See the following picture for clarification:
  • Do the same in the Front Orthographic View, but first set your Sym button to YZ. This time you will want to select the Red Arrow and drag it inwards to the circle edge.
  • Press Spacebar to exit Point Mode, and navigate around your newly created object in the Camera view.

This object is the “star” or a morning star weapon. Feel free to augment this shape even further to the students liking. They key here was becoming familiar with the T, V, S hotkey workflow in working with the Point Mode.

Note: The Symmetry Mode (Sym) will be covered more in depth in Module 6.

Exercise 2:

Create the Chain of a Morning Star.

Using Torus primitives, we will create a series of loops to represent a chain.

  • Get > Primitive > Polygon Mesh > Torus
  • Move the Torus off to a side from the star and press F to frame it in our camera view.
  • In the Object properties window, increase the U/V subdivisions to 10.
  • Press X to activate scale tool and drag select the origin point to the left, this will uniformly shrink the torus. Scale it inwards until the XYZ coordinates in the Transform scale menu show about 0.1.
  • Drag the blue handle to the right until the Z axis is at about 0.15.
  • Drag the Red handle downwards until the X axis is at about 0.08, and do the same for the green handle until the y axis is at about 0.08.

This is a basic chain link, we will now duplicate and rotate copies of this chain link to create our entire chain.

  • With the chain link selected, press CTRL D to duplicate it, and then press V to translate it slightly to the right.
  • Press C to rotate the duplicated link, and drag the blue sphere so that it is now perpendicular to the flat link.
  • Line them up as close as you can, but try to avoid intersecting the 2 objects.
  • Now with these 2 objects created, lets duplicate them using Ctrl D to create 4 links!
  • Repeat to create 8 links, and so on until you have about 32 links.
  • Now drag select all of the links and translate them to the left of our morning star until the far right link barely intersects with our morning star.

Note: the Morning star may look disproportionally large to the size of the chain, if you desire, simply scale the star down by its origin using the scale tool – and reposition it so that the chain intersects with the chain.

And finally, let’s make a handle.

Exercise 3:

Create a Morning Star Handle.

  • Get > Primitive > Polygon Mesh > Cylinder.
  • Press V to translate the sphere to the far left of the chain.
  • Rotate and scale it so that it becomes the top of the handle, translate this cylinder so that it intersects with the last chain link. Set the radius of the handle to about 0.75.
  • With the cylinder still selected, CTRL D to duplicate and elongate for the handle portion. Set this radius to about 0.50.
  • And finally duplicate the top of the handle and translate it to the base of the handle.
  • Drag a box around the morning star, chain and handle to select everything and press F in each Orthographic and Camera views to frame our entire weapon.
  • Feel free to save your work in the Scenes Directory under Haus of Mapping Curriculum Project Path.

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