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With text, you have a really handy control called 'offset', which allows you to easily increase/decrease the size of your letters from their centres not by changing the shape proportionally but by adding/detracting from its outline, which looks like this (border remains uniform):

enter image description here

By contrast, when trying to scale down a mesh object using the 's' it looks like this (borders not uniform):

enter image description here

Is there a similar 'offset' control that allows similar for mesh objects or any other way of achieving the same result? Seems odd that such a useful tool would be exclusive to text.

marklovin
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    You can scale a mesh along normals (Alt+S). It may be quite difficult to scale it so faces to remain perpendicular, but still it may be a workaround – Mr Zak Aug 06 '15 at 16:02
  • When I do Alt+s my object disappears and undo doesn't even get it back. I'm confused, what am I doing wrong? – marklovin Aug 06 '15 at 16:17
  • @marklovin make sure you move your mouse slowly (it's an interactive feature), if your cursor speed is too fast that might be the issue, also *left* click to confirm. – iKlsR Aug 06 '15 at 16:22
  • For me it just behaves exactly the same as if I just press 's' on its own, i.e. it just scales it proportionally.... – marklovin Aug 06 '15 at 16:31
  • It depends on your mesh. If it's default cube, then yes, there won't be any difference. If even that default cube is subdivided several times, then there will be difference. So you might want to include screenshots of what you're after and what are you trying to do – Mr Zak Aug 06 '15 at 17:08
  • @MrZak I have added an extra screenshot to show what I mean. Thanks – marklovin Aug 06 '15 at 17:22
  • It would be clearer with the .blend file added. At the moment it seems you're trying to scale down the top layer instead of scaling it up. While scaling such objects it may work changing its origin and Pivot Point, so scaling will be done taking in account another pivot point and may be more accurate – Mr Zak Aug 06 '15 at 17:35
  • The thing to understand here is alt+s scales vertices along the NORMALS, unlike scale which moves all vertices towards the object centre. It looks like you may have to convert to a mesh before trying alt+s. – beiller Aug 06 '15 at 18:04
  • @beiller If these layers, both top and bottom, have no thickness (i.e just converted from 2D curve, for example) than even after converting to mesh Alt+S won't work predictably on them. It will just "grab" these letters by Z axis. That's why I think it would be hard without .blend here – Mr Zak Aug 06 '15 at 18:55
  • Okay I have added another screenshot and rewritten the question. Hoping that will help you all understand what I mean. Would be great if someone out there has a solution. – marklovin Aug 07 '15 at 05:23
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    If instead of working with a meshes you work with curves you'll still be able to use the *offset* option. –  Aug 07 '15 at 05:25
  • I think this is the answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42643/offset-edges-along-a-plane – MicroMachine May 25 '17 at 08:57
  • To get the desired behavior from 'alt + s', you need to be in edit mode with vertices selected. (Sounds like all vertices should be selected in your case) – Justin Helps Sep 18 '18 at 13:42

1 Answers1

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Depending on how good your mesh is, the inset tool can do a pretty good job of offsetting inwards with odd shaped outlines. Press I and move the mouse to adjust the amount.

Even with the messy mesh created from converting some text to mesh, only a couple of points need fixing.

enter image description here

sambler
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