Quickly selecting and sizing your object

Index to all 30 lessons in this Milkshape tutorial

  You are going to do this lots of times when making a model so you should practice it. Remember these are the basic skills you learn as second nature so you don't have to think about them. You just do them as you quest to create what your imagination sees.

Let's select and resize our sword blade

In the tool console panel at the right press the Select button, then Under the "Select Options press the face button. FInally unselect the Ignore backspaces checkbox.

Now click and hold the right mouse button then drag it over your box. The whole box will turn red.

You have selected your box. It is the active object.

Can you figure out how to make it bigger?

In the Control Panel, Under the Model Tab press the Scale Button. Now in the Z box at the bottom enter 10 and hit the Scale button. This makes the z dimension ten times its original size.

Much easier to see the triangles when the side is ten times its original size. Now you can select the two triangles easily and delete them.

When you are done of course you want to go back to your normal size so enter .1 in the Z box and hit enter.

This brings it back down to 1/10th which is your original size.

Enter 1.0 in that Z box and hit enter. This doesn't do anything, it just resets everything to 1 -1 scale. You don't want to forget about having an odd number in one of those scale boxes because it will effect you the next time you hit the scale button. Always keep those numbers set at 1.

So that was easy.

To rescale your object you:

• Press the Select Button
• Press the Face button at the bottom (under Select options)
• Make sure the Ignore Backfaces button is unselected
• Click/hold and drag over your object to select it
• Then select Scale button
• Enter your new scale 2= double size 5 = 5 times, 10 = ten times etc.
• Do the work you want to do on the object
• And if you want to return to your original size after work is done just enter the reciprocal scale. .5=half, .01 = 1/10 etc.

This scaling stuff confusing? 1/10, 1/2 etc. Can't figure out the scale right? This is easy it is something called Reciprocal. Let's take a quick look at reciprocal so you can scale up or down then return to your original size easily.

Continue with the Milkshape Tutorial