As you may know, a quick method to align or straighten a set of vertices or faces in Blender is to perform a Scaling operation with a value of 0 on one or two axes, often using the Global or Normal orientation modes. However, this method does not work in every situation.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! As you may know, a quick method to align or straighten a set of vertices or faces in Blender is to perform a Scaling operation with a value of 0 on one or two axes, often using the Global or Normal orientation modes. However, this method does not work in every situation.
If we have a group of vertices arranged more or less randomly between two end vertices that are not aligned to any of the scene’s global axes, and we want to straighten the entire selection while keeping the endpoints fixed, we can create a temporary orientation for the selection.
First, switch to the Normal orientation mode and select only the two end vertices. When you make this kind of selection with this orientation mode, one of the axes of the new reference system matches the direction between the two vertices. In the example shown on screen, this corresponds to Normal Y.
Now, in the orientation selector in the 3D View header, click the Create Orientation button, which allows us to create a new orientation system based on the current selection. Let’s call this new system Temp, since it will be temporary.
Select all the elements you want to straighten, making sure to select one of the end vertices last, using a separate multi-selection, so that it becomes the active element. Then change the Pivot Point to Active.
Looking at the selection now, we can see that the new orientation system is centered on the active vertex and has an axis that points toward the last selected vertex, because when we created the new reference system the only selected elements were the two endpoints.
If we now apply a Scaling operation with a value of 0 on the other two axes of the new reference system, we successfully align all the vertices between the two ends while keeping the endpoints fixed in their original positions, just as intended.
As for flattening faces, the process is much simpler because there’s no need to create a temporary reference system. In this case, all you need to do is separately select, as the last element, the face with the correct angle, so that it becomes the active element of the selection. Then, switch the orientation to Normal, change the Pivot Point to Active, and perform a Scale 0 operation along the Z axis, which corresponds to the Normal of the active face.
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