This quick tutorial is going to run you through all the basics of translating/rotating/ and scaling an object in Armorsmith Designer.
Let's start out with the translation tool. However before we talk about the tools themselves lets take a moment to talk about the two different spaces we can transform an object in. There's local space and world space. These can be toggled via this drop down in the tool bar.
Local space refers to moving a costume part in relation to what it's attached to. So up is along the length of the bone, left would be based on to left of the bone and same thing with forward/back.
World space refers to moving things relative to the world. So up is always up, left is always left. Forward is always forward.
With that out of the way lets start talking about the translation tool. The translation tool is used to move parts around on the Avatar. Now first, to activate/deactivate the tool. There's a button up here on the tool bar, or in the menu bar, you can select Edit->Translate. There's also a keyboard shortcut, you can press 'T' to activate the translate tool. Finally there's also an entry in the right click context menu. Plenty of ways to activate it depending on your preference. For me it's the simplest, just press 'T'.
Now you can see the gizmo that appears for moving an object around. We have red for X, in Armorsmith we use Y-up orientation so we have green for Y, and blue for the Z-axis. To move an object along any of these directions just click anywhere on the line and drag with the mouse to move the object in that direction. There's also these little squares in the corners. Selecting any of those will move the object in the two directions that make up the square.
In the tool information, you can see exactly how much you've moved the object by.
Next, we'll talk about the rotation tool. The rotation tool is used for rotating models around on the Avatar. The rotate tool can be activated via the button on the menu bar, you can select Edit-Rotate. There's also the keyboard shortcut, 'R'. Finally there's also the option in the right-click context menu. Again, I'll activate using the keyboard shortcut.
This is the rotation gizmo, we have red for rotating around the x-axis, green for rotating around Y, and blue for rotating around the Z axis. To rotate a part, simply click on any of the halo's and then drag with the mouse to rotate the part around. You can see just how much you've rotated in the tool window to the right.
Now let's move on to the scale tool. Scale isn't affected by Local/World space, it's essentially always in the local space of the objects. To activate the uniform scale you can use the button on the tool bar, Edit->Scale->Uniform, The keyboard shortcut is 'S', or you can right click and choose it from the context menu.
Once the scale tool is active simply click anywhere on the bounding box and drag with the mouse to scale the geometry up or down. If you want to scale each dimension separately you can activate the non-uniform scale by right clicking, and choosing Scale->Non-Uniform Scale. Now you can click on each face of the bounding box separately to scale in that dimension. Another new option just introduced is the shrink fit. This will attempt to automatically uniform scale the model to fit the body part it's attached to. It will scale as small as it can go without colliding with the body part it's attached to.
One useful option when scaling is to adjust the opacity of the model. This gives a clear indication of how the part is fitting on the avatar. This is also useful with the shrink fit, as you might need to adjust the position of the model to get it just right. After a few adjustments that looks like it'll be a pretty good fit!
The other method of scaling is the Free-Form Deformation, but we'll save that for a future video.
If you prefer to enter your transform values directly, you can use the Transform window to the left. In here you can enter all the values we've just talked about directly, in either World or Local space. By default all of the Translation values are in millimeters. The Rotation values are in degrees, and the scale values are from 0-100%.