What is meant by “X axis is tangent to Y axis”. This makes no sense, nor does “Simple” deform

[Bill Slobotski]

“Simple Deform” is one of those commands that frustrates for no reason.  It *could* be made a lot more self explanatory and functional but for whatever reason the Blender coders don’t.  I will just use proportional editing. 

[Omar Domenech]

Yes sir, that is the Blender way for sure. Lots of stuff to pick from that will frustrate you. But you’ll get the hang of it. What I like to do is open a fresh scene and with no goal in mind, just tinker with it, get a feel for all those gotcha’s. Next time I use it I’ll have to spend a bit of time messing with it anyways, but each time it gets easier and easier. 

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Bill,

The Simple Deform Modifier is indeed not simple (but the deformations it makes are simple).

Use what you like, but the Simple Deform Modifier is great for making something circular (like a tire, for instance), because you can set the Bend to 360°. (I’d like to see you do that with Proportional Editing😉). The most commonly used alternative for that, is a Curve Modifier, but that always gets a bit messy, with a hole or overlap, that needs to be fixed.

…and I have no idea, what is meant by X-Axis is tangent to Y-Axis, sounds plain wrong, but maybe I am just missing the context (timestamp?)

[Jake Musumeci]

It seems like Jonathan is saying the imaginary tangent between X and Y axis’ is where we need to select to bend the plane.
Once we rotate the origin, that imaginary tangent is rotated onto the actual X or Y axis allowing us to now bend the plane.

That’s my understanding when following along with the video, trying to do it myself

[Demian Coorey]

The X and Y tangent thing also stopped me for a bit, but eventually I worked it out. It really helped me to get control over the bend option on the simple deform modifier.

In Jonathan’s example, the plane is on the floor. The plane’s local Z axis points up, and its X and Y axes are “tangent” to the plane ( I prefer to use the term “coplanar”, but let’s stick with tangent). Blender uses both of the tangent axes to calculate the bend. One of these axes (in this example, the Y axis) tells Blender what line to bend around. The other other tangent axis, the X axis, tells Blender the direction of the bend (up or down). So while the X axis is in its default tangent position, Blender doesn’t know what direction to bend in, which is why the plane doesn’t bend.

There are two ways to fix this:

1) Rotate the object’s axes around the Y axis so the X axis points up or down. This method introduces its own complications, which is why I always use the second method.

2) Preferred method: Introduce another object, usually an Empty, which starts off at the same orientation as the plane, ie the Empty’s X and Y axes lie along the plane, and the Z axis is perpendicular. Then rotate the Empty around the Y axis so the X axis points up or down. I then parent the Empty to the plane, though this is optional.

With this understanding, I now like the simple deform modifier.

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