Align Object to Face

BoBo_the_seal

For years, I've been using a script to align objects to the face normals of another object. Does anyone know if this is native to Max 2012 now?

- BoBo

PolyHertz

Ribbon > Object Paint > Paint Objects

Add whatever mesh you want to place on something else to the "Edit Object List". Set the "Paint On" to "Selected Objects", then select the object you want to paint on to and click the Paint button.

monster

Alt-N is the default hotkey for Normal Align. The workflow is a little weird. You select a model. Press the hotkey. Click on a face of the selected object, then click on a face of the target object. It'll connect the two spots.

The biggest problem I have with that tool is that you have to turn off the smoothing groups or the normals might be bent when they align.

Mark Dygert

The normal align is ripe for an overhaul.

1) It doesn't work with snaps, so trying to align the center of a face to the center of another face is nearly impossible. You can click and drag the align gizmo around when you are selecting your faces but they don't snap to anything. So you have to "align" and then snap, just another step that eats up more time.

2) Like Monster pointed out it uses the smoothing normals instead of the actual face normal. To see an example of this create a cylinder, assign every poly to smoothing group 1 and then try to align a box to the cap poly, it won't be aligned to the face, it aligns to the averaged smoothing normal.





Clearing the smoothing groups and setting them back up is a huge waste of time and can cause a bunch of rework especially if you're doing high poly work and using the double smooth method (smoothing helps define how things get smoothed).

What I do is apply a Smooth modifier (defaults to clear the smoothing), trigger align normal and then delete the Smooth modifier.

It's way more steps than it needs to be and could be solved with a simple caddy floater with a few options to align to face normal, smoothing normal or an averaged normal over a selection of faces (such as the side of a cylinder), kind of like the bevel tool. Not to mention if it was a floater that allowed you to pick each face you wouldn't need to have both faces directly in the viewport, you could pick, navigate around the scene, preview and then apply. But as it is now you have to have both faces facing the viewport camera and you get one shot at click/dragging.

cptSwing

Huh. That explains some of the odd results I've had with the normal align tool over the years. Come ON, Autodesk.

kurt_hectic

lol

AlecMoody

The work around I use is the primitive maker script combined with the autogrid option for object creation. That allows you to place objects aligned to normals and perfectly snapped in place.

Joshua Stubbles

I've always used Borislav's script: http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs4/alignobject2face/

BoBo_the_seal

Thanks guys! I still use script that Joshua Posted. Been using it for years. While using it on my latest piece, it just struck me as odd that I'm still using a script originally made for Max 4

- BoBo

Mark Dygert

That's cool that it still works after all these years, I would be a bit nervous about it becoming incompatible with newer versions.

Bummer it still aligns to the smoothing normals, even with edit normals & break applied. I guess I'll have to try and script my own tool...