The concept of applying the values you have on your 3 axis spans across software, from Maya with Freeze Transforms to Blender with Apply Scale, position, and rotation.
To apply Scale in Blender you can press Ctrl+A on the keyboard, then the Apply menu will pop up, and then you press Scale or hit 3 on the keyboard.
In this article, I will explain to you why we use the Apply menu and some of the most important features it has so you can start implementing it in your workflow.
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Why Do We Apply Scale in Blender?
Every object in 3D is a container of several items, now this concept is very apparent in Maya where you can select to see shape nodes and then you can see that the 3D object you have is consisting of a shape node and a transform node.
The same thing goes with every software, the 3D object that you see on the screen has 2 parts:
- Shape: An element that is making it render as a 3D object.
- Transform: Coordinates that tell it where it's located, how much it's rotated, and how big or small it is.
In Blender, you can access the Transform coordinates by pressing "N" on the keyboard and it will pop up from the right, in the image below I created a Cube using Shift+A -> Mesh -> Cube and then moved it and rotated it and scaled a bit.
As you can see in the Location, Rotation, and Scale there are values because of the changes I made.
The image below is after I apply all transforms including scale, notice how all of those fields are 0 and the cube is still in the same position, rotation, and scale that I set it in.
Using the Apply menu because essential when you are applying modifiers and the result you are getting isn't as expected.
This is because Modifiers come as a layer on top of whatever transforms you have, so if you are getting unexpected results when using modifiers, I would advise you to apply all transforms and try again.
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At this point, if I want to revert the cube back to its original location, rotation, and scale I can only do that manually because I have applied all transforms.
If I didn't apply I can just put 0 in the location and rotation fields and 1 in the scale field and the cube would be reverted to its original coordinates like I didn't do anything to it.
So be careful when you apply transforms.
NOTE: the Scale field default value is always 1 and not 0 because if you set it at zero the mesh will disappear.
How Do We Apply Scale in Blender?
It's very straightforward to apply Scale, Location, or Rotation you need to do that in the Apply Menu, make sure you are in "Object Mode" and press "Ctrl+A" on the keyboard, the Apply Menu will pop up with a lot of options like the image below.
Let's go through some of the most important options here:
- Location: This will apply only the position changes you have done to your object.
- Rotation: This will apply only the Rotation changes you have done to your object.
- Scale: This will apply only the Scale changes you have done to your object.
- All Transforms: This will apply the Location, Rotation, and Scale changes you have done to your object. (very similar to the Freeze Transforms action in Maya)
Conclusion
At first, it can be a bit tricky to understand how a 3D object and its transforms coordinate relate to each other, and how the concept of applying transforms helps us when modeling and playing with modifiers.
Keep in mind every 3D object is made of 2 layers, a shape layer, and a transform layer, with the last controlling the position, rotation, and scale of your object in the 3D space.
With that in mind, you can at any point in time apply all these coordinates and have a fresh clean slate of coordinates without worrying about any past values that may give you issues when applying modifiers or rigging.
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