Tutorial: Using the Manipulator
Start a new
scene and create a torus from the Create menu. (Or any other shape you
like, just something to use the manipulator on.) When the torus is
selected, you will notice a red, green, and blue object at its center.
This is called the manipulator. The manipulator allows you to perform
actions such as move, scale, and rotate. The center of the manipulator
is the pivot point, or the point around which these actions
happen. The default hotkeys for the manipulators are 'q' for the
all-in-one universal manipulator, 'w' for the move manipulator, 'e' for
the scale manipulator, 'r' for the rotate manipulator, and 't' to work
with no manipulator. You can also switch manipulator modes by holding
Ctrl and scrolling the mousewheel. For now, press 'r' to switch to the
rotate manipulator. Drag on any one of the handles, and you will see
that the object rotates around the pivot point in the direction of the
handle you are dragging.
This is useful,
but you may find you want to rotate around a different point. You can
move the manipulator without affecting geometry by entering manipulator
edit mode. You can toggle this mode on and off by choosing Selection
> Toggle Manipulator Edit, by pressing Ctrl+MMB (middle mouse
button), or by pressing the Insert key. While in this mode, the
manipulator will turn white. The same manipulator modes apply, so you
can still scale, rotate, or move the manipulator depending on which
manipulator mode you are in. Press 'w' to switch to the move
manipulator. Let's position the manipulator somewhere near the outer
perimiter of the torus, so that we can rotate it about its end.
We can position
the manipulator by dragging on the various handles, but there is also a
quicker method. Hold Ctrl and drag anywhere in the screen, and the
manipulator will move in the plane of the screen. This can be done
regardless of whether or not you are in the manipulator edit mode. It
applies to all manipulators, so you can rotate, scale, and move in the
plane of the screen. The rotate and scale are still centered around the
manipulator's position. We can efficiently position our manipulator by
repeatedly rotating the view and dragging in the plane of the screen.
You will notice that the view rotation is always centered around the
manipulator's position.
When you are
done positioning the manipulator, use Toggle Manipulator Edit again to
re-enter the normal mode of operation. Press 'e' to switch to the scale
manipulator. Try dragging on the handles to see how scale performs
differently when the manipulator is not centered. Now switch to the
rotate manipulator and try turning the torus on its end.
So far we've
just been working in object mode, but the manipulator works the same for
the component modes as well. Try switching to face, edge, or vertex mode
and moving around some components. You may notice that the manipulator
is re-centered in the selection every time you make a new selection. In
object mode, each object remembers its manipulator position, so it will
be in the same place when you reselect it.
Now that we've
got a better idea of the manipulator basics, let's try working with soft
selections. Soft selections allow you to get more of a clay-like feel
when editing your model. (See the help file on Enable Soft Selection for
more detailed information.) Subdivide the torus once or twice and use
Refine Control Mesh on the Subdivision menu to make the underlying shape
editable. Select the object in object mode and then press 'A' (Shift +
'a') to convert the selection to vertices. (Alternatively, once in
vertex mode you can just area select the whole shape with MMB to select
all vertices.) Now go to the Modify menu and select the Soft Selection
options (Modify > Enable Soft Selection > ...) and set the
tolerance somewhere around 0.8. The tolerance determines the degree of
the soft selection effect. Now, select Enable Soft Selection from the
Modify menu. (The menu item is checked when soft selection is active.)
The soft
selection effect will be applied to everything that's selected, so for
now let's try working with all of the torus's vertices selected. Press
Ctrl+MMB (or Insert) to toggle manipulator edit mode on, and position
the manipulator somewhere along the surface of the torus. Toggle
manipulator edit mode off, and try moving the manipulator. (Using Ctrl
to move in the plane of the screen may be preferable here.) The effect
should be readily apparent. Note that you can easily enable/disable
manipulator edit mode using the mouse, rotate the view, and use the
manipulator all using only the mouse and the Ctrl and Alt keys for an
efficient modeling experience.
Copyright 2003 Nevercenter Ltd. Co. All rights reserved.
