Maya 2011 - Snapping rotation of an object to a specific angle

Steve Schulze

This might be a dumb question. Seems like something that'll have a really obvious answer, but it's kinda doing my head in.

I've got an object with a random rotation value. I'd like to rotate it to a specific angle. Is there a tool or convenient trick to for instance snap it's rotation to a couple of vertices or an edge or the grid or something.

I've done some poking about in the help and on the net, but I'm not super-sure what I'm looking for and the only scripts on high-end 3d that I managed to dig up were obsolete and no longer function.

Avanthera

If you double click the rotate tool to bring up the rotate tool attributes, check the box that says discreet rotate, and below it will have a box with how many degrees to rotate,

I did have another way of rotating to point to verticies, but I just tried it, and I couldnt get it to work, I'll post if I get it working.

Grimm_Wrecking

j = rotate snap

Steve Schulze

Yeah, Discrete rotation isn't really what I'm after. I want to be able to orient my object to a specific surface. Or just the grid if that's simpler.
Like this:


I'm doing this a lot with some pretty high poly objects so anything that makes the process less cumbersome is going to be pretty useful

chronic

Modify > Snap Together Tool

using this tool, you click a face on one object, click a face on another object, it will show a connecting arrow - and then press enter and they will snap and align to each other based on face normal.

and check out the other snapping tools and options under the Modify menu

sltrOlsson

chronic wrote: »

Modify > Snap Together Tool

using this tool, you click a face on one object, click a face on another object, it will show a connecting arrow - and then press enter and they will snap and align to each other based on face normal.

and check out the other snapping tools and options under the Modify menu

Are you fucking serialz?! This is awesome, can't understand how i've missed this for 5 years >.< Love you!

Steve Schulze

Ah, there we go. I knew there'd be a simple solution. It's a pity it kills the transform information. Would be cool to be able to keyframe it, but I guess we can work around that.

Thanks Chronic.

sltrOlsson

Jackablade wrote: »

Ah, there we go. I knew there'd be a simple solution. It's a pity it kills the transform information. Would be cool to be able to keyframe it, but I guess we can work around that.

Thanks Chronic.

Maybe try to child it or group it under the object that snaps to the face?