Getting prims not to tilt

Hey guys,


1. When you pull out a prim or any furniture piece how would you get it to be even and not tilted to one side?

2. Is there a certain number you can also write into X, Y and Z to also straighten out the
prim or whatever piece you have out?



Thank You for any info you can provide.

Most of the furniture will sit right if all the angles are 0 but sometimes furniture makers do wacky stuff to get cool shapes so they have to set their stuff at weird angles to look right. If you lost the original numbers maybe write a note to the maker and ask what the angles were?

Oh I almost forgot! If something is hopeless to get sitting flat you can edit it and make it physical and let it settle and then turn that off again.

I wasn't aware that other people don't make it a point to keep their stuff as neutrally rotated as possible. I guess that's what happens when you make everything instead of buying stuff. I need to get out more, I guess.

If you've got mod perms on the furniture, one easy solution would be just to link it to a zero-rotated invisible cube. If you've got the dreaded local rotation bug, the cube won't actually reset the way the arrows are pointing when you select the object, but it will at least make the numbers work, so the thing will sit straight every time you rez it.

Otherwise, all I can really say is be careful what you buy. In my opinion, any item that has to be at weird rotation values in order to look straight was made by a sloppy builder. There's never any reason the parent prim can't have a neutral rotation.

Thanks but I what I'm looking for is when I pull out or build, make a prim how do I keep it straight so it's not crooked or tilted? I think there's a way to snap it into it being straight and not crooked or off to one side.

Just a regular box prim or any prim you built or pull out your inventory is what I want to know. I believe there are also numbers you can write in the x, y or z boxes to also set the prims straight.

Hope this is a better explanation of what I need.

Thanks

Carlos, I'm a bit confused what you're trying to ask. Let me try to take this one step at a time.



I'm not sure what you mean by "keep it straight". If you want something not to rotate, just don't rotate it. It won't rotate on its own. So the way to "keep it straight" is just not to turn it.

When you first create a cube, its rotation is automatically 0,0,0. There it will stay until you change it yourself.

EDIT: I realize that I was probably misunderstanding you here. I think what you need to know is in my next post. /EDIT



You can snap an object's rotation to the grid, if that's what you mean. In the editor, click the Use Grid button. Now when you go to rotate an object, you'll see a white protractor (compass) appear on the screen. Move the mouse onto the protractor while you're turning the object, and the rotation will snap to the protractor's ledger lines. Snap to cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, or Down) on all three axes, and the object will be perfectly "straight". Make sure the ruler is in World mode for this, by the way.



Items pulled out of inventory will retain whatever rotational values they had right before they were taken into inventory. If something was rotated to 0,0,0 before you took it in, it will be 0,0,0 when you take it back out again.



Yes. The number you're looking for is zero. Enter zero into all three rotation fields, and the object will be straight.

You could also use 90's or 180's instead of zeros. Rotating an object by 180 degrees on X or Y will turn it upside down. Rotating it by 90 degrees on X or Y will turn it on its side. Any of these could be thought of as "straight".



I think what's needed is a better explanation of what you're trying to ask. Care to give it another go?

EDIT: As I said in my other edit, I think I figured out what you meant. See my next post for details. /EDIT

Well all new prims start out neutrally rotated, but if you're simply trying to figure out how to rotate an object without leaving it at an odd angle, here's how: make sure Use Grid is checked, then as you rotate by dragging the rotation rings (from Ctrl or the Rotate option), drag your cursor onto the gridmarks you see - especially the ones which may be labeled North, South, East, West, Up, or Down.

If you're having problems getting that to straighten it out for you, pay attention to whether your Ruler Mode is on Local or World; "Local" just rotates it relative to it's current rotation, while "World" helps you to align it with the real, universal up and down and north and such.

Carlos, it just occurred to me what you might have meant. Were you perhaps trying to rotate objects freely, from just any random spot on the manipulator sphere, instead of by the axis rings? If so, then it's no wonder you're having problems. The rings are there to constrain manipulation, precisely so you can rotate an object in just one direction at a time. If you don't use one ring at a time, the rotation will be unpredictable.

Try this:

1. Right click on any object you own, and hit Edit.

2. Hold down ctrl to put the manipulator into rotation mode. (Or click the Rotate radio button, near the top left of the Editor window.)

3. Take a good look at what's now on the screen. Notice you've got three rings around the object. These are for the three axes of rotation that exist in 3D space, which we call X, Y, and Z. Notice also that the three rings outline a sphere, which is colored translucent white in between the rings. Take no action yet. Just look at what's going on.

4. Now hover your mouse over one of the rings. Notice it lights up. This indicates you've got you're mouse in a position where you can click on that ring to select it, and then use it to rotate the object around just one axis. Try it with each of the three rings, one at a time. Use the red ring to rotate the object around the X axis. Use the green ring to rotate the object around the Y axis. Use the blue ring to rotate the object around the Z axis. You'll see that you have total control this way, no random "tilting" can occur.

5. Now, just for the sake of understanding, move the mouse somewhere in between the rings, onto the white part of the rotation sphere. If you click and drag the mouse now, with none of the rings lit, the object will rotate freely and unpredictably. This is because you're now using what's called "unconstrained manipulation". Generally, in 3D space, you should never use unconstrained manipulation, only constrained.

To summarize, what it all comes down to is this. Use the colored rings for constrained rotation, just like you use the colored arrows for constrained movement, and the colored blocks for constrained scaling. The white part of the sphere is for unconstrained rotation. Don't touch that part.

I hope all this has made sense to you. It's harder to describe with words than it is just to show.


EDIT: Whoops, I guess Al pretty much said the same thing. I should have read that first. Assuming this is actually what Carlos meant, good work, Al. You figured it out way before I did. I really had no idea what he might have been talking about until just now.

I may be wrong (I'm at work and can't go inworld to verify), but I think rotations are relative to the root prim of the object. If that prim is set at a weird angle--often the case if it is a poseball or cushion--then the correct angle of the object would be at that same weird angle. I've encountered that on furniture I've bought (from high quality builders, even), and on stuff I've built. On things I've built, relinking and choosing a different prim fixes it.

I've peeked inside some furniture, and have seen a small plywood box at the center. It was heavily scripted, and I just assumed the builder used it as their default script box on all the pieces in the set. Now I'm wondering if it is so they always have a known center point with a zero rotation.