Extrusion question maybe

Mosk the Scribe

I have a tooth with several thousand polygons and curving roots.

Is there a way to select the whole object and extrude everything inward so I have a smaller duplicate that follows the original contours of the tooth?

Or is there a way to re-orient the tooth so it follows a convenient x/y/z orientation so I can at least scale on those axes? Right now it's at an odd angle that matches nothing, but I don't want to monkey with that because it assumedly makes each tooth fit in the gum properly.

I guess I could add a null object as the parent of each tooth, then rotate that to whatever position is needed and set to modify in the model room and then set back to 0 in the assemble room.

Would welcome any suggestions (or confirmation if last way sounds sensible)

Thanks

JoeMamma2000

Mosk the Scribe said:

I have a tooth with several thousand polygons and curving roots.

Is there a way to select the whole object and extrude everything inward so I have a smaller duplicate that follows the original contours of the tooth?

Or is there a way to re-orient the tooth so it follows a convenient x/y/z orientation so I can at least scale on those axes? Right now it's at an odd angle that matches nothing, but I don't want to monkey with that because it assumedly makes each tooth fit in the gum properly.

I guess I could add a null object as the parent of each tooth, then rotate that to whatever position is needed and set to modify in the model room and then set back to 0 in the assemble room.

Would welcome any suggestions (or confirmation if last way sounds sensible)

Thanks

I *think* what you might want to do is select the tooth, and then go to the Motion tab, and select HP>Obj, which moves the manipulator to the center of the object. Then you can copy/paste the tooth, and scale it down to make a replica.

Is that what you're talking about?

If there's an issue with the manipulator orientation not matching up the way you want, I recently did a thread about "Rotation vs. Orientation" which explains how you can change manipulator orientation.

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks JoeMama - that is what I'm talking about - I have to run out now, but I'll try that later and let you know if it worked - this is not a daz model; I imported it as an obj but should really be a group of objs I believe and somehow it seemed different than I'm used to

Thanks - more later

Mosk the Scribe

JoeMamma2000 said:

If there's an issue with the manipulator orientation not matching up the way you want, I recently did a thread about "Rotation vs. Orientation" which explains how you can change manipulator orientation.

Thanks - missed that portion down at the bottom - found that threat and will read through that as well.

JoeMamma2000

Mosk the Scribe said:

I have a tooth with several thousand polygons and curving roots.

That must hurt... :)