Axis / object orientation - two questions

Hi All,

I have two questions:

  • I have two objects that are part of a camera housing that should be perfectly aligned and vertical. I accidentally rotated them to an unknown angle at the same time, so they are still aligned with each other as they should be, but when I shift+select them, the gumball is oriented to the world (not aligned with the objects’ tilted angle), and I don’t know exactly how far I need to rotate them to get them back to vertical. What is the best way to perfectly re-orient them to both be perfectly vertical?

  • In a related question, I have a full camera model with lenses, housing, etc. that mounts to a ball joint where the camera pivots. Is there a way to permanently set the axis of rotation of that group of objects on the center of the ball joint, so that I can pivot the whole camera as a unit to show it in different orientations, and then be able to go back and reset the tilt to vertical?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Paul

Hi Paul - if you have two known points on the skewed objects that should be vertical , you can use Orient or Rortate to align them to world Z -

A workaround for the second item is to Block the camera - this it is a single object and relocating its gumball should stick.

-Pascal

Thanks for the quick reply. Both answers are solutions to my problem and worked great.

Much appreciated!
Paul

I do too many of these “accidental” re-positionings. “Undo” is my friend. There are times when I’ve gone back dozens of steps because I spent so much time getting the object position right the first time that it was a net gain to correct the slip-up that way and re-do all the subsequent steps. :roll_eyes:

Hi All - One thing you can do to at least help if not solve this is to set Options > Mouse page > Click and Drag > “Drag selected objects only”

-Pascal

Yes, Thanks. Where I get burned most often is when working in Ghosted (or Ghosted 50%) and I absent-mindedly start to box-select a curve object and end up dragging the surface that is what I actually clicked on. It’s easily noticed and easily un-done.

Ah, OK - I’m sure you know this, but holding Alt when window selecting prevents the click-select from happening.

-Pascal

Nope. All these years and I never knew that. Now, if I can only ingrain the habit…