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Working with Primitives to Build Set Models

For rough models of buildings, desks, etc, it can be convenient to build set models from SynthEyes's built-in primitives: plane, cube, cylinder, cone, pyramid. The first and most important step to that process is usually to pick a convenient coordinate system as that will make placing and aligning the meshes you create much easier.

The perspective view's linking tools can make aligning primitive meshes accurately easier. Exact alignment is especially important when a texture will be extracted for the mesh, as even a little 'sliding'—caused by the mesh not being placed accurately—will blur the extracted texture.

Tip : If you have a mesh selected and the 3-D panel open, you can use the scaling tool's uniform scale value to not only rescale the mesh, but if you drag while holding down the ALT/command key, you can reposition it simultaneously along the line of sight from the camera so that it's visual size doesn't change at all! (Similar to the Nudge mini-spinner on the Coordinates panel.)

Tip #2 : It's also possible to do this from a 3D viewport and the XYZ panel, by turning on the selection lock and scaling tool, then scale-dragging in the viewport starting from the camera as the pivot point.

 

Three-Point Alignment Align Via Links Dialog Summary of Ways to Create Links Using Pinning Other Helpful Operations

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