Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
The Work Plane is the light-colored grid in the 3D viewport. This grid snaps to align itself to either the
xy, xz, or yz plane as the perspective rotates to stay roughly perpendicular to the current perspective. When
creating geometry, this is key to knowing what is happening in the viewport. If you choose to create geo-
metry in the perspective view, clicking in open space can be quite ambiguous. After all, the depth of the
view means that the point you clicked could be represented by a nearly infinite number of points between
the screen and the ongoing space that falls under your cursor. The Work Plane takes away the guessing.
When clicking in a 3D viewport, new geometry will be created on the Work Plane. So, if you want to create
something on the ground plane, you will need to rotate your view to be roughly downward facing (looking
down the y-axis). This also works with the x and z axes.
The Work Plane can be manually positioned and oriented to any point in space or it can be aligned to any
existing geometry. Re-orienting the Work Plane in this manner will not only rotate and position the white-
colored plane itself, but will also reset the orthographic views to make them correspond to this new world
center. At the beginning, the Work Plane will be a useful tool for making object creation simple, so it is best
to get used to it now. In more-advanced modeling, good use of this option will enable you to create your
models and scenes more quickly, with better accuracy, and increase your options when facing difficult mod-
eling challenges.
Creating and Editing Primitives
All 3D programs offer a common array of basic geometric shapes known as primitives . Modo offers five
basic primitives: cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, and torus. Each one has options that enable you to modify it
to suit your needs.
Figure 2-2 shows modo's primitive palette. In addition to the five geometric shapes, the primitive palette
contains the Tube tool, the polygon Pen tool, and the Text tool. Each of these can be created interactively or
by dropping a preset-sized object into the current layer or a new layer. Simply clicking one of these icons
starts the tool and enables you to interactively create any of the objects.
Holding the Ctrl/Control key and clicking a primitive icon creates a unit primitive . Figure 2-3 shows the
change of icon indicating a unit primitive option. This is an object with the default dimensions and settings.
Holding the Shift key and clicking a primitive icon creates a unit primitive in a new mesh item (see Figure
2-4 ) .
Each primitive has its own options such as position, scale, and number of subdivisions. Also, there are
additional meshes that can be created by clicking and holding the buttons for each item. Before you start
modeling specific objects, let's look at each of the basic tools in the 3D arsenal. Understanding these will
help you create more-complex forms in the future. For the most part, the function of these tools is self-ex-
planatory, but there is a lot in the details that should not be overlooked.
The Cube Tool
When you activate any tool in modo, the bottom-left area of your screen will populate with a set of options
specific to that tool. In this section, you will look at the options for the Cube tool (see Figure 2-5 ). The
options for the Cube tool are pretty simple and serve as a good introduction to the way that tool properties
work.
Figure 2-2: The primitive palette
 
 
 
 
 
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