9.5.2

500 • CHAPTER 8
TOOLS MENU • 501
Example
Figure 1. Figure 2.
Figure 3. Figure 4.
Consider a scene with two objects, a (polygon) sphere and a cube (Figure 1). The cube is a child (sub-
object) of the sphere. The axial length of both objects is 1/1/1 (the default).
 Now choose Tools > Object to select the Object tool. Select the Sphere. In the
Coordinate manager’s Size column, set the drop-down list to Scale and set X
(Scale) to 2. As we would expect, both the sphere and cube become distorted,
as illustrated in Figure 2.
 Select the cube. Choose Tools > Rotate to select the Rotate tool (or click
Rotate in the top toolbar). Disable the X and Y axes by clicking their icons in
the top palette. Now drag from an empty space within the viewport to rotate
the cube about its Z-axis. The cube distorts when rotated (Figure 3).
The points of the cube no longer obey a circular trajectory while they are rotated in the XY plane.
Instead, the distorted parent system causes this movement to be elliptical. And here we have the
classic distortion problem. It invariably occurs when objects exist in a distorted parent system.
Effects of this type are a fundamental problem in the world of 3D animation. Some users of other 3D
software may not encounter this problem because their software uses separate editors for modeling
and animating. However, these users lose the convenience of integrated modeling and must switch
back to the modeler each time they want to edit the model.
To prevent this problem, simply use the Model tool for scaling the sphere. If the damage is already
done, choose Functions > Reset System and select the two options, Normalize Axes and Offsets.
In either case, the cube will then rotate without distortion (Figure 4).