9.5.2

622 • CHAPTER 11
FUNCTIONS MENU • 623
 Choose Functions > Reset System and in the dialog that opens, enable Align
Orthogonally and disable the other options in the dialog. Click OK to reset the
cube’s axis system.
 Rotate the cube.
The cube no longer distorts when rotated. Its axis system has been restored
and is no longer distorted. However, it has not been restored to its normal size,
since the Normalize Axes option was not enabled (Figure 3).
 Undo the last step.
 Choose Functions > Reset System.
 Select the cube once more and enable the Align Orthogonally and Offsets
options.
This time, only the axes are corrected. The object’s points remain exactly where
they were (Figure 4).
Align Normals
When creating surfaces you may sometimes inadvertently create surfaces whose normals point in
the wrong direction. Using Align Normals, you can quickly correct the direction. When you use Align
Normals CINEMA 4D will adjust and re-align the incorrect surface normals to the correct direction.
CINEMA 4D adjusts the orientation of the normals according to the normal direction of the rst surface
of the currently selected group of surfaces. If no surfaces are selected then all normals are aligned.
Why exactly are these normals needed? CINEMA 4D cannot easily recognize an object’s inner and
outer surface without extra information. A basic sphere has an inner and an outer side, but only one
surface level, which can be confusing. We need a better denition. Let’s dene this single surface
level to have an inner and an outer property. Outer designates, in principle, the direction in which
the surface normals point and inner is therefore the opposite direction. This plays a role with texture
projection, where you can project textures from only the front or the back.
So, if as many normals point one way as the other way, how do we decide which is the outer surface?
We could either choose randomly or, perhaps, look at the rst polygon in the sequence and use its
normal as the basis of our calculation — CINEMA 4D does the latter.