Rotation Snap Selection

Looks like an interesting & useful tool but I don't know how this works.
Anybody ever done a video on it or a tutorial ?


Rotation Snap Selection:  Rotate selection in a way that the highlighted manipulator axis will align to an under cursor snappin target, or point to the opposite direction if negative axis is picked. Possible ways:
1. Click to pick the aligning axis. Move cursor over to a snapping target, LMB/MMB click. For LMB, the rotation axis will be the manipulator's axis that is most parallel to cameral direction. For MMB, the rotation axis will be formed from the plane defined by hilighted axis and snap point.
2. LMB click a snapping target to snap selection location onto the snapping point.
3. MMB click a snapping target to snap selection orientation onto the snapping point's orientation.
4. RMB click a snapping target to snap selection's both loaction and orientation onto the snapping point's loaction and orientation.
***Note: If there is no snapping target detected on mouse down, workplane or world's origin and orientation will be used as snapping target.

Too complicated for me 

Ok, I think I have figured out the basics of the tool.

Select object you wish to align to other geometry.
Run tool -> Rotate Snap selection. Manipulator will then show up on your object.
LMB click on vertex (of any object) where you want to place your object.
MMB click on any axis of the manipulator and a drag line will show up and then snap that to a vertex of any object.

Very good tool to quickly align one object to others in a precise way.

Yes I think it might help to see where this idea came from.  Back in the day when Voidworld was on the polycount forum I made a suggestion for a Visual Align Tool which became the 'Set Manipulator' & 'Rotation Snap Selection' tools.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1373834&postcount=1005

The two tools are linked somewhat to the same concept of aiming and aligning an axis to a target.

Hope this helps, as I think it's one of the most powerful things that exists in NVil and not many other packages.  I get so frustrated when I need to jump to another app.


p.s. Was it really 2011? :/

Looks like an interesting & useful tool but I don't know how this works.

The same as "Set manipulator"

You will already know the basics, where you can use "LMB", "MMB" or "RMB" to snap directly to snap point.
There is also options to control orientation to snap point.

Simple example:-
You have a box and want to change its orientation, you want to rotate the object around its "Y" axis, so its "Z" axis points to snap point.
Change view so that "Y" axis is pointing toward the view. Call "Rotate Snap Selection", "MMB" or "RMB" on "Z" axis. Move cursor to snap point(a line will drag from selected axis to snap point), "LMB" on snap point.



If you instead wanted object to rotate around its "X", first change view so "X" axis is pointing toward view. Call "Rotate Snap Selection", "MMB" or "RMB" on "Z" axis. Move cursor to snap point(a line will drag from selected axis to snap point), "LMB" on snap point.



If you wanted the "Z" axis to point directly at snap point, so that the object rotates around both "X" and "Y". Call "Rotate Snap Selection", "MMB" or "RMB" on "Z" axis, move cursor to snap point and press "MMB"



Note:-
when selecting axis for alignment (as in example the "Z" axis), you can select either side of the axis, so you can align "+" or "-" direction.

Thanks Steve, those little animations with your description definitely help to understand the tool better. I am certain I will use this tool a lot when I need to align stuff in a precise way.

......those little animations with your description......

I found a free "avi to gif" converter, so was having a play. 

Please go on playing!

steve, nice gifs.  What was the free "avi to gif" converter that you found?  I've tried a few but they all produce too large file sizes for decent quality.  I've resorted to using Photoshop now.

Hi ghib,

http://www.video-gif-converter.com/

I do not know if the file size it creates are considered good or too big. I do not currently have other software installed for this to compare output quality/file size.

Thanks Steve,  I'll be sure to give that a go..

I really like these gifs for showing small snippets of functions.
I might start a new thread for my favourite NVil functions.  Some of them are quite obscure like the curve loop/space loop combo.

Thanks Steve,  I'll be sure to give that a go..

I really like these gifs for showing small snippets of functions.
I might start a new thread for my favourite NVil functions.  Some of them are quite obscure like the curve loop/space loop combo.

That would be great, I'd really like to see some of the more obscure functions.

Some of them are quite obscure like the curve loop/space loop combo.

I did post an example of those tools, but an animated gif would be better example.

Thanks Steve,

Seems clear enough to me.

Are there only two obscure tools or are there more you haven't posted ?

I think there are a lot of things in NVil that could be overlooked because they exist in the Streamline Engine toolset but aren't exposed by default.

Space Loop and Curve Loop are just two of these.

I'm currently in a crunch period but once it's over I'm going to devote a bit of time to making some more of these gifs.

I made a bunch when we were beta testing Voidworld in 2011.  Here's one of them where I was showing Kun that the curve & space loop tools were working well for tidying up very messy meshes.


I think with more captions and slower modelling they could be a nice way to show off the power of NVil.

This one shows the powerful bridge tool which can autocomplete based on your edgeloops.