The term transformation in computer graphic is everything that has to do with position, rotation and scale. So basically In this lesson, we are going to cover on how to move objects, how to rotate objects, and lastly how to scale objects. In render, we can transform objects using at least three methods. First, by using the manipulator second by using shortcuts, and third by typing in the values. In this lesson, we are going to focus only on how to transform objects using the manipulator. First, let's discuss on how to move objects.

To move objects, you need to activate the move tool, which is this button in here. If we have the move to active and we have an object selected, we will see these three arrows at the center of the object. These colorful arrows is what is called the manipulator. The blue arrow indicates the z axis direction, the green one is the y axis, and the red one is the x axis. Let's say we want to move this object along the x axis. To do that, hover our mouse cursor over the red arrow, then click and drag like this.

As we can see, the object will move along the x axis. If you want to move it along the z axis, we can click and drag over the blue arrow. And the same thing with the green arrow. If we click and drag on it, the object will move along the y axis. So it is very important to place your mouse cursor correctly over this axis arrows to get the correct result. Now besides arrows, if you look closely, you can actually see squares at the manipulator.

These squares are playing constraints, meaning you can use this to limit the movement to access at the same time. For example, if we move our mouse cursor on this blue square, and then Drag, we are moving the object freely, but only on the y and the x axis directions, the object won't be able to move on the z axis direction. The same concept applies to the other plane constraints. If we direct the green square, the object can move only on the x and the z direction, the y axis is locked. And if we drag Red Square, the object can move only on the y and the z directions because the x axis is locked. Okay, now how about rotation to rotate objects using the manipulator we need to activate the Rotate mode by clicking this button here.

We can see the manipulator is different instead of arrows. Now we have circles, but the same concept still applies. Hover over the blue circle, and then click and drag to rotate the object around using the z axis as the rotational axis. Use the red circle to rotate using the x axis. Use the green one to rotate using the y axis. Now beside the X, Y and Z axis, we can also rotate using the current viewing axis.

To do that, we need to click and drag this white colored circle, we can see the object will rotate using our eyes or our viewing direction as the rotational axis. Sometimes we also want to rotate an object freely, we don't any axes constraints. We can do that by moving our mouse cursor inside the manipulator area, but not touching any of the circles and just drag it around like this. We can see the object rotates freely without any axis constraints. Okay, so that is how you rotate with the manipulator. Next is scaling to scale.

We can click on this button, we can tell that we are in the Scale tool mode by these colorful boxes. This is the scale manipulator click drag the red box to scale the object only on the x axis, use the green one to scale the object on the y axis, and the blue one to scale object in the z axis. Now, most often, when you scale a complete model, you really don't want to stretch or squash it, you want to do uniform scaling, meaning the X and Y and Z axis scale together at the same time, you can do that by hovering the mouse inside the manipulator, but not touching any of these colored xs and just drag further or closer. As we can see, the scaling happens uniformly in all directions. Next, in scale mode, we can also see plane constraints just like in a move mode.

Basically, the concept is similar to the move mode. If we direct the blue square, the scale will happen in x and y direction, but not in z direction. If we drag the green square, the scale will happen in action. NZ direction but not in y direction. And finally, as you may already guess it, if we direct the Red Square, the scale will happen in y and z direction, but not in the x direction. Okay, until now you already understand what these three buttons do.

This is for a movement, this one is for rotation, and this one is for scaling. In blender, there is also another mode where we can access all of the transformation modes at the same time. To do that, we can click this button, you can see that the manipulator is different. It shows movement, scale and rotation all together at the same time. So we can move the object using the arrows. We can scale using the boxes and we can rotate using the circles