Somewhat of a basic question but the answer eludes me…

This refers to the transform tools on the toolbar:

How to I transform (move, rotate, scale) objects, primitives and points with respect to their local coordinate system? It's always in world coordinates…

I'm not quite sure what you mean. The handles will put whatever values in the parameters to achieve how you moved the handle. Or are you talking about those Align options in the right-mouse menu of the handle?

In other apps for example, if you have a sphere-mesh and select a polygon-face then you can move it with respect to the coordinate system of that very polygon. It's usually called something like “local transform”.

The align options only give me view, world and object.

If I model something organic and was to move a vertex I'd usually pully it along the normal. Or if I scale a polygon I would scale it with respect to its own local coordinate system otherwise it's likely to go all wonky and weird because most things are not orthogonal right-angled cubes sitting nicely in world space. :wink:

If you just want to move it along the normal, you can choose Toggle Peak Handle. Otherwise, you have to use Start Orientation Picking and pick 3 points.

Local transforms is an area where Houdini could definitly use some love. Try doing orientation picking a couple hundred times for a model. Been there done that, it gets old very quickly.

So there isn't a way to do this comfortably? Wow, Houdini is missing a trick!

Maybe that's why so few people model with it. It'd take ages to get anything done and you'd rip your hair out in the process.

Hey there

As far as I understood, all transformations in the OBJ level are global and the ones inside a geo container are local. You can also use the Transform Object parameter present in some nodes to specify the coordinate system for an object as well.

Can you send an example of what you're trying to do?

Cheers

rafaels
Hey there


Can you send an example of what you're trying to do?

Cheers

Sure

well, it's not the most intuitive really…
but it surely can be done

but it does lack the ease of use of Maya, for example, with realigning the handle to edges and stuff, which is essential to tweaking poly modeling… unless anybody knows how to do it and can tell us!

With the peak handle you only translate along the direction of the normal. In other apps you can translate/scale/rotate along the local coords of the point/primitive/edge without needing to manually align the handle. It's a huge time-saver.