Blender generic questions from a previous 3ds max user
Hi guys, I'm trying to learn blender so I thought I would use this topic for any generic small question I have about it.
In 3ds max you have this transform gizmo above for moving operations, so say I wanted to extrude constraining the movement to the x/z axis, then I would drag on the plane where those lines meet (where the red and blue line touch, or inside the square outlined by them), a process 100% visual which would work even if the gizmo wasn't color coded and didn't tell you the axis letters.
In Blender, using the "Industrial Standards" keymapping, you press Ctrl+E to start the extrusion process and then you press Shift+Y to exclude the y axis from the movement, constraining the extrusion to x and z.
The problems I see here is that I need constant awareness of the axis and the way I am oriented which is already a slowdown, not to mention likely needing to look away from the screen and at the keyboard to hit that Y, plus the wide opening of the hand to catch Shift+Y with only one hand...so 3 problems here.
I really don't like this.
So my question is: there is a way to get the same "visual constraint gizmo" in blender?
Replies
The Blender Mega Thread is probably more appropriate for a catalogue of generic questions, not that it matters too much.
In short, yes this is possible, you use one of the tools introduced in >2.80. Shown here is the transform gizmo. There should be a gizmo for every modal operation you can do with hotkeys (although I don't use the gizmos, so I'm not 100% sure).
(apologies for the chicken scratch annotations) You can also change the basis space for your operations with the panel highlighted on the top:
I do think the problems you list are just a matter of building muscle memory - although I agree that some of blender's hotkeys are... convoluted. Hope this helps.
Right, there is that gizmo, but it disappear during the extrude operation, in which it is replaced by this one instead:
What I would like to have is that gizmo you've shown during the extrusion operation
Alternatively, a way to extrude edges that doesn't require the extrude tool. In 3ds max you do it by shift+dragging an edge.
What would be the blender equivalent for edge extrusion modeling?
I see. I don't think blender offers anything like that. I typically use extrusion just on a single axis, so the gizmo makes sense in that respect. I think for non-aligned operations (like you describe with Shift-Y), the idiom is to extrude with no transform and then use the transform tool to manipulate the new geometry. This is quite quick with hotkeys (E -> click -> G -> ...), but I imagine a bit slower with the gizmos.
yes, it's a bit different in my case since I'm using the "Industrial standard" key binding, so it would be "Ctrl+E -> middle mouse button -> W -> Ctrl+E ->..." that two extra step of having to activate the extrusion tool and having to make a "void click" just to generate the extrusion (plus re-activating W "select and move" every time) breaks the flow quite a bit, in terms of speed of modeling and for me that's a deal-breaker, which is a shame because I'm sure blender has a lot of good stuff to offer x_x
Would it be hard to create a plug-in (even myself) to accomplish the edge extrusion modeling speed from 3ds max?
For anyone not familiar with it, it looks something like this:
Where I'm only holding Shift and dragging with the mouse, no extra buttons involved.
Heya,
Besides looking for ways to reproduce exactly the Max behavior you are used to, you really want to have a closer look at how Blender allows all transforms to be made without touching neither the selected component or the manipulator at all - relying on the movement of the cursor in relation to the screen coordinates at which a command has been initiated.
So in practice, edge extrusion "the Blender way" actually looks like this :
You'll notice that there is never a need to actually precisely grab the edge to be extruded, or any manipulator for that matter - it only requires the desired edge to be selected once, and then some mouse movement from anywhere on screen. And it doesn't even require LMB to be held down either, as similarly to the Move command in CAD software the action simply gets confirmed at the end when needed. Your mouse wrist will thank you :)
There's also "extrude to cursor" BTW, which I'm sure can be pretty handy even though I don't use it myself.
That method is actually the first I had tried and precisely the reason I've started this topic 🤣
As you show in the video up to 0:08, say you where modeling a skatepark ramp that way, as soon as you rotate the view as you do in the video, you realize your extrusion is all messed up because the Y axis movement is not disabled. Essentially in blender you need to start the extrusion then press Shift+Y to disable that axis and do this for every segment, which is more labor intensive and will destroy my wrist over time since Shift+Y is a weird reach x_x
Well, for now, what I've end up doing is going in the keymapping and swapping the "X/Y/Z axis" keybind with the corresponding "X/Y/Z plane".
So for instance "Y Axis" is now "Shift+Y" and "Y Plane" is simply "Y"
This way the workflow is "Drag -> Y -> Drag -> Y ..." which is far simpler than repeating Shift+Y, still not as good as 3ds max (since 1 extra click per segment extruded and requires awareness of the axis when you start) but acceptable.
The thing is, is the key swapping coming to bite me in the ass?
What are the "X/Y/Z Axis" commands used for?
10:45, I've found someone else resenting the Y 😂🤣
Yeah - my suggestion was only to cover the input aspect (as the "Blender way" shown in the footage really is light on the hands and very fluid). But indeed that doesn't solve the other aspect of your question (control of the position of the resulting edge/strip in 3D space).
If you know that the plane you want to constrain to is y (therefore, using the shift-Y constraint or in your case your custom Y hotkey), you could script the following macro : Extrude - Confirm - Yplane constraint - Initiate move. If all goes well you'd just have to move the mouse then confirm ...
But indeed the most straightforward way is probably to just display the Manipulator, trigger Extrude and immediately confirm, then drag on the tiny square representing the Y plane.
Oh btw, you might also get some good use out of "Align View to Active". If the viewport is set to ortho you'll be able to look at the ramp from the side. And if the ramp object isn't aligned to the global world, you can temporarily create a temp transform for that, here based on the face at the beginning :
Oh, that's a nice idea, actually I can just do "V", go to the side and edge extrude without having to worry about a third axis, no need to press Y every time 😀
That works as well for me, thanks 👍️
Dunno if its been said but, just select the poly, hit 'E' then escape, then whatever move, scale rotate function you need.