Adding the option to extrude on the 'Local Z Axis'(?)
Hello everyone,
Recently I have wrote a post on Blender.Today requesting this feature and have been informed that I should post it here. I couldn't find a way to simply link it instead of making a separate post so I do apologize if I missed that option.
In short, Maya has a very useful extrude option that Blender lacks which I believe is very needed for modeling. I am no programmer and I am not entirely sure what it does behind the scenes so I don't even know what its called. In Maya it is called Local Z Extrude so that's how I will refer to it. Whilst I am aware of the workarounds, they are a huge hassle when working on complex models which is why I am requesting this feature.
As it currently stands there are only two solutions I am aware of. One I showed in the gif which is to create adjacent 'walls' of sorts which will create it the desired effect for you, which you will then have to delete right after. The second is to make a polygon and inset. This is a hassle on curved surfaces as you will need to bridge everything into polygons to inset because ngon insets are inaccurate.
Thanks for hearing me out on this and I would love to get your opinions! :)
EDIT: Apparently there is an addon named mesh_offset_edges that I wasn't aware of in my 6 years of using Blender. After doing some testing its not infallible and doesn't work perfectly on curved surfaces as much as I'd have hoped but it does the job. I still believe this should be in Blender's default build and not an addon but for now I will mark the thread as 'Done'.
13 Comments
cant you just put it into normal transform orientation and then press E followed by the Z key twice? You could change the pivot point to individual origins too if you have multiple faces selected and want to extrude along individual normals.
Or maybe press alt E and then choose "region vertex normals"
This is an edge issue and not a faces issue. If you meant edges then I'm afraid I've already tried this already and it doesn't work. If you think I've done it wrong and want to give it a shot yourself then please tell me if you managed to do it.
* @MizManFryingP * ahh ok, I see what you mean. Yep that would be handy. I guess for the time bieng (you might already be doing this), you could select the edge loop, press f, then i, size it as required, and then press x to delete the extra face.
* @tibbyninja * Yeah, sadly this is the only viable solution and it works very poorly on curved surfaces (which I tend to model) :(
Thanks for confirming that I didn't do it wrong. For a second I thought I overlooked something really obvious haha
* @tibbyninja * Try to check something before write about it. Case not only about such " box style " mesh. What if mesh have kind of curved shape?... Individual elements does not work if elements connected so you can't select edge loop end do any transform using per edge individual normal. Only way to work around in such cases is edge ring or checker deselect, add additional loop then extrude faces by normals then delete faces,etc. but not how it may have to work to be efficient.
* @forestgumpovu4 * good point.
There is an addon included in the recent builds of 2.80 in the Testing category that does this. It's called Mesh Tools. The specific tool you're looking for is Offset Edges. By default it just creates unconnected edges, but in the Redo Panel, you can change the method to Extrude and you will get the functionality you're looking for.
I agree, I feel this should be in the default build. There is a feature like this in Maya and Modo and I think C4D too. It's pretty important if you ask me and I have missed it in blender. I would love to have this in a non-addon way. Personally I would un-mark this as "Done".
* @daniellapalme * I agree with you 100% but I just want to follow the rules and not cause any trouble.
If the devs and or moderators are okay with switching this back then I'm all up for it
imgur.com/p7MG0nZ It's so easy.
If this is an addon, not only have I not heard of it before but I also can't seem to find it. Did you program it?
Could you provide a link?
Edit: Nevermind I found it. Updating the post.
* @MizManFryingP * blenderartists.org/t/offset-edges/584283
* @MizManFryingP * I use it so often, I put it on the D key )