Mirroring angles?

Mirroring angles?

Anonymous
Not applicable
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Message 1 of 11

Mirroring angles?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Back again with another question. 

 

I'm trying to mirror the angle of the exterior of my ship accross the blue line to create a small spoiler on the side approx. at the green line. But I have no idea how to do this. If there are any tools in Maya that could do it for me etc.

spoiler.png

 

I thought I could just duplicate the faces, flip them and then cut off the extra but that would require pivoting around a very precise point and I don't know how to set the exact coordinates of the manipulator in order to achieve rotation/scaling around and exact point so that's out. Unless there's a way to do this and someone wants to share how with me?

 

So I resorted to trying to calculate the angle myself using vertex coordinates but my math isn't strong enough. I found an equation that could help but, sadly, I am way out of my depth here.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1258383/how-to-find-the-second-vertex-of-a-line-segment-fro...

 

I'm pretty sure the first equation would be

               ______________________

5.317 = √(-23.459-x)^2 + (6-y)^2

 

Just not sure how to solve for multiple variables 😐

Alternatively I tried looking up the "standard trig identities" as mentioned in the thread at stack exchange. There's one approximate bajillion of them. WHICH trig ids and HOW???

 

Anyway, I'm sure I'm doing this the most painfully complicated way possible. Anyone have a simpler solution?

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Replies (10)
Message 2 of 11

mspeer
Consultant
Consultant

Hi!

 

Using common modeling tools, like Extrude Edge,... ?

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Message 3 of 11

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hm, I'm not at my computer right now but how would extrude edge perfectly mirror the angle of the faces in question?
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Message 4 of 11

sean.heasley
Alumni
Alumni

Hi @Anonymous

 

Extruding the edge basically extends the current edges you have selected. However you have the ability to line them up at whatever specific angle you would like.

 

Here's a simple video that shows the basics of extruding!

 

 

Please let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

 

 

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

 

 

 

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

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Message 5 of 11

sean.heasley
Alumni
Alumni

Hi @Anonymous

 

I'm just checking in again to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion I provided yesterday work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

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Message 6 of 11

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hey guys, I've been busy the last couple days and didn't get a chance to follow up.

So I watched the video and I didn't see anything in it that would help me mirror the angles I'm going for, maybe I didn't describe what I'm trying to do well enough.

Of course I will be extruding, but my question is how do I do this at a precise angle that is opposite of the angle of the face I'm extruding from. Such that the extrusions I make form a symmetrical diamond shape.

If you look at screenshot I posted the faces I'm extruding from would be the upper right side of the ship at the rear. The blue line I drew in indicates the center of the diamond shape. I want to mirror the angles of the existing faces across that line. The green line is an approximation of the path I want to extrude along forming the other half of the diamond shape. But of course it's not actually symmetrical, just like the end product wouldn't be if I just extruded by eye. So. How would I get the correct angles?
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Message 7 of 11

sean.heasley
Alumni
Alumni

Hi @Anonymous

 

I see you're having multiple issues with this model across multiple threads. When you get a chance, can you please zip and attach the scene file here or via dropbox/google drive or another file sharing program so I can take a look at it?

 

I'd like to have the model in front of me so I can make some more detailed posts/videos on how to solve your issue!

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Message 8 of 11

Anonymous
Not applicable

Welp I probably wasn't describing what I wanted to do well enough. In any case I figured out the solution on my own so I dont' need anymore help on this one. You'll notice the spoilers on either side of the cockpit area when you see the scene and you'll see the diamond shaped negative space between them and the hull of the ship so. That's what I was talking about.

 

scene upload

 

Turned out, as per usual. I was massively overthinking the problem. I didn't need to calculate the angles of those faces then calculate the inverse of those angles and distances. All I had to do was reverse the difference in coordinates from one point to another to get an "opposite" point from the original: if B is -2x and +1y from A then -1x and +2y gives you the opposite point. I was banging my head on my desk and googling trigonometry for a long time before that dawned on me Smiley Indifferent

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Message 9 of 11

sean.heasley
Alumni
Alumni

Hi @Anonymous

 

Yeah you shouldn't be needing to do trig in order to model a submarine Smiley Tongue

 

That said I made a quick video just showing off some tools that could help you out!

 

 

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Message 10 of 11

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hey @sean.heasley I really appreciate you going out of your way to make this video for me!

 

The bridge and symetry tools looked like they'll be really helpful at some point!

 

Although, the video didn't actually directly address my question. As I've suspected it looks like I'm not communicating what I mean well enough. Because I keep asking the same question over and over but every answer I get is not an answer to my question. Which must mean I'm not asking it right, right? So as you noticed in your video I have already made the spoilers, and I actually mentioned that in the post where I attached the file 


@Anonymous wrote:

...In any case I figured out the solution on my own so I dont' need anymore help on this one. You'll notice the spoilers on either side of the cockpit area when you see the scene and you'll see the diamond shaped negative space between them and the hull of the ship so. That's what I was talking about.

 


But since I'm frustrated with how no one seems to understand what I'm asking in every post I make, and because I need to figure out how to explain these things better to be able to get answers in the future I'm going to take one last swing at explaining what I meant??? It should be easier now that I've actually made what I was talking about haha

 

spoiler3.png

 

Ok, the yellow line on the left side is drawn over the edges of the original faces of the model that I want to mirror. The green line is the mirrored faces I was talking about. I wanted to make faces that exactly mirrored the angles of the faces in yellow accross the blue line forming a symetrical diamond shape. See how the green and yellow lines form a diamond shape? That's what I was talking about. Does, what I was saying makes sense now? And if so, how would you have said it differently to make someone understand what I meant? Becasue I still can't think of a more direct or specific way to say it than that and you mentioned that it was hard to understand what I meant with the blue and green line (refering to the first drawing I made on a screenshot to describe this). Mirror the angle of the original faces, accross the blue line, such that the new faces would be oriented at the angles shown using the green line.??? Forming diamond shape in the middle???

 

But. UGH. It turns out I DIDN'T figure out how to do this on my own. Because I mentioned I wanted a SYMETRICAL diamond shape, and as you can see the faces are not symetrical across the blue line! Which I just realized looking at it in orthographic view as I drew this. See how the solid yellow triangle on the right side is much more narrow than the solid green triangle? That's not symetrical Smiley Sad

 

Oh god. Does everyone get what I meant now? If so, I did it wrong. How can I make the spoiler such that it's actually symetrical with the sides of the ship??? I want the green triangle and the yellow triangle to be the exact same size and shape...

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Message 11 of 11

sean.heasley
Alumni
Alumni

Hi @Anonymous

 

Ah ok I understand now sorry for the confusion!

 

This was a much more in depth explanation and I highly appreciate the time you're taking to highlight everything to easily understand what you're going for!

 

In this case, you could select the 2 green edges and the 2 yellow and extrude them at the same time. When you do this, you should be able to type in a value for the amount of distance they move and they should move the same amount of units. Then once they are lined up with each other, simply combine the edges together.

 

Another option would be to simply fill the whole by bridging the edges together then cutting a line down the middle.

 

Please let me know if this makes sense or if you need more assistance!

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