Working on an angled surface

[Crayox13]

Hi guys,
I encountered this problem several times and I usually just got lucky to solve it. How do you model on a surface that is on an angle on two axes? I mean everything I tried to do on it gets messed up. I am modeling this box for fun, inspired by the mobile game The Room and I hope I will animate it too - so I have this sloped surface (a cut part of the box) that will have a small hatch on it and it's about 30°on y and say 45°on x axes. I can type those numbers in the small hatch rotation settings, but is there a way to rotate the whole work area so that slope becomes 0,0,0 if you know what I mean? So I can work on it with more ease...because I will have a lot of other stuff to do on that slope.

[Neilg]

Create -> helpers -> grid. Align that with the surface, right click on it and choose 'activate grid'

there's a way to have your viewport controls use this grid too - so when you press t or l or whatever to switch then it uses the grids version of top/left/whatever. cannot remember where the button is now though.

[vlado]

Sorry I can't really help, but I just wanted to say that I loved "The Room"

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

yes. I couldn't not using that on every job. Also, you can tick the auto grid.

Create -> helpers -> grid. Align that with the surface, right click on it and choose 'activate grid'

there's a way to have your viewport controls use this grid too - so when you press t or l or whatever to switch then it uses the grids version of top/left/whatever. cannot remember where the button is now though.

[Crayox13]

Oh I think that's exactly what I was looking for cubicle! Thanks, will try it later!
I hope it is ok to write this here but I recommend The Room to everyone! It's awesome in all aspects! It's so well modeled, animated, puzzles amazing....also, will exercise those grey cells
Also Vlado, try The Room Two!

[Jorq1H]

Sorry I can't really help, but I just wanted to say that I loved "The Room"

Best regards,
Vlado

Me too! Love to hate it, that is.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Me too! Love to hate it, that is.

What "The Room"? O_o

[Crayox13]

Hm...I was talking about an Andorid/iPhone mobile game.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Hm...I was talking about an Andorid/iPhone mobile game.

Ahhhh totally forgot about the fact I read it in ur post... duh something didnt click in my rusty brain o.o

[Crayox13]

I space out all the time too ha ha

I just tried that cubicle and it worked of course...thank you again so much! A bit embarrassed that after 10 years of professional work I just learned this, and I've been wondering about this for so long! Thank youuuu! Also I used "normal align tool" for the first time Just love when after so long I learn something new.

[Jorq1H]

And I was drawing a contrasty parallel. The Room is at the same time a very successful mobile game, and one of the worst movies ever made.

[trixian]

In addition to using autogrid when creating objects, you can at any time change your working axes from the default "View" to the bottom one called "pick" or something. Then just pick your object that is aligned the way you like and the gizmo aligns it self to that.
I usually autogrid-create a few boxes and tape objects around my scene when it has lots of off angle stuff, and then pick them as i need them, and max keeps them in the drop down list until you delete the picked objects.

[Crayox13]

Interesting, will try that too! Thank you.

I have another problem. I have another cylinder as a small hatch. It is linked to the main object which moves sideways. At the same time the small hatch has to rotate to open a compartment while being moved along with the main object. I'm using "local" rotate so that the cylinder rotates around its z axes but it seams to rotate on all other too. Please see the screens. Any ideas?

It should be parallel to the edge of that object.

[Crayox13]

Oh found it....I have to use TCB instead of euler rotation.