[3dsmax] Aligning Vertices in Splines

felipefrango

Is there any way to align vertices in splines? I can't find any sort of align tool anywhere. I just need the basic stuff, select a bunch of vertices and align them on a certain axis.

Right now the only way I can think of doing this is copying the coordinate for a certain vertex and paste in on others but there's gotta be a way to avoid this monkey job.

Thanks in advance.

pior

The usual way (easily scriptable I reckon ...) would be to redefine the axis/pivot orientation of the main curve, then use parent mode to place the control points easily.

Mark Dygert

I'm sure there is a more technically efficient way to deal with it, but I normally just use the scale tool set to "use selection center" to smash a group of spline verts flat along an axis.

I really wish they would take some time and clean up the spline tools menu UI and add in some basic functionality like what there is in edit poly for this kind of thing. Make planar XYZ shouldn't be that hard to add... I might be happy with them moving the detach button next to attach instead of on the opposite end of menu.

felipefrango

@pior: Sounds interesting, but I have no idea what you're talking about, I don't mess around with splines too often.

@Vig: Thanks that worked, I'd tried the scale smask trick but it was set to Pivot Point and it didn't scale at all so I thought it was just not possible with splines, but setting it to Selection Center did the trick.

This is my spline btw, maybe it'll make my problem a little clearer. I wanna align the points to make the gaps between the plates even.

Mark Dygert

You could... convert it over to edit poly, straighten and align the edges, then select the boarders and click "create shape" to convert the edge selection back into splines.

I would be tempted to use the 2D-3D unwrap feature in TexTools so I could straighten the edges in the UV editor (straightens a bunch of edges horiz or vertically really quickly) and convert it back to 3D, then splines.

TexTools might even have a quick script to straighten edges too...

felipefrango

Thanks a lot Vig, couple more ingenious but simple solutions, definetely gonna try them out. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that such a simple feature isn't available in the spline editor straight away though.

danr

tools > align?

edit - actually scratch that, if memory serves it does sub-object like a cow might

felipefrango

I wish it was that simple, but that's for aligning objects. I can actually alignt vertices in a spline with other objects or even with itself but it doesn't allow for vertex vs vertex alignment.