ROTATE

Next is rotate tool . In menu bar it is located in Modify,

Modify>Transformation tools>Rotate tools

or press the keyboard key E and click on the object you will see a gizmo appears in a bunch of circles with different colors of course Red, Green and Blue are their but we have yellow this time also around the outside.

What this is and how its work let's talk about it.

The circles correspond the axis so we can rotate our object. For example we want to rotate our object on X axis. We pick the red Circle line and by holding left button on the mouse you can rotate around the X axis. We can do the same with Y axis and Z also just is careful check the colors of the axis you want to rotate at. If you did not changed the axis Y to X or Z to Y from the preference settings then the settings will be Green for Y axis, Red for X axis and Blue for the Z axis or you can remember it as R B G or R G B which is X Z Y or X Y Z. I have remembered it RGB which is X Y Z you can do the same if you like or create something you can remember. Now let's move on.

Oh I forget to tell you that you can rotate any of the axis on 360 degrees angel.

In addition to these as you see that you have a yellow circle around the X Y and Z axis which is outside manipulator. What this does? It rotates the object around the camera. In which ever view you are looking the object it will rotate around that view. For example if you are looking at new object from the front view it will rotate it from the front and if you are looking at on your object from the bottom it rotate from the bottom. Also if you want you can click between the circles so it gives you a free point you can rotate freely in any X Y and Z axis at the same time (I find this a little bit harder to control so I usually use the one axis at one time)

As you may notice if you have channel box open when you are rotating your object in the readings of Rotate X, Rotate Y and Rotate Z are changing in the channel box while you are rotating.

You can also rotate your object by typing the exact rotation in any of the axis’s in the channel box rotate options. For example if I select the object and type 60 on the Rotate X. My object will rotate at 60 degrees angel automatically. I find this move faster typing in the memory.

But only it works better when we know in that how much rotation we need either we do manually.

If you don't want and rotate the object and want to bring back it on the zero point just select Rotate X Y and Z in channel box and type 0, the object will return to 0, where it was at the first time. We do also have options for the scale to also but right now as we talk about scale also so I move on the scale tool and you must check the options also if you are a beginner in Maya maybe you will find something interesting.

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