3DS Max's wonky viewport navigation.
polycounter lvl 11
Anyone have any tips and tricks they use to navigate with 3D Max's viewport view? I have that timeless issue where you want to zoom into something from afar and it gets slower and slower the closer you get, like the view is attached to a rubber band or something. I also find that my pan is much faster than my zoom, drives me nuts. How can fix these issues? Free solutions please, I cannot afford a space pilot or anything of the like :P
Replies
What helped for me, is to use the ortographic view to work. Takes a while to get used to it, but it's much better to work when you get used to it, give it a shot!
Also, with ortographic you can zoom as much as you want with the mouse wheel without the zoom slow down like it happens with the perspective view.
Keep the tips coming guys if you have em!
In perspective, the zoom is relative to the size of the object when you press z so the the move is coherent, hence if you focus on a big object and then try to zoom on a little object right after, it will be "slow" because the zooming ratio is still adapted to the big object. In the other way around, with the focus on a little object, the zoom will be too strong on a bigger object.
I called it max confusion to simplify stuff, but indeed, it's a logical behavior, except max could be smart *cough* and auto-adapt the zoom to the object's size.
But whatever, z fixes it.
You can also zoom by holding ctrl+alt+middle mouse button and moving the mouse up and down..when you zoom this way, you don't get that issue, but its more sensitive, so its harder to zoom at specific things sometimes.
Also, yes....I'm pressing z like...every 20 seconds when I'm modeling stuff.
Some artists I know use it, but then again, you must use ortho to work with a wacom.
I use a wacom with max. I've just set it up so that I have keyboard shortcuts for zoom, pan, and orbit (around selection)
otherwise it works fine. I use the quad menus a lot.
I have the button nearest the nib mapped to middle mouse button (so you can "alt-middle mouse" to rotate view) and the button nearest the eraser mapped to right click. You'll also want a hot key so you can pan the viewport (this is Z-MMB for me - I don't use the default hotkeys)
I tried to set up some fancier stuff at one point but alt-rotate (the only rotation option which doesn't interupt your current operation) is hard coded and not accessible in script.
Zooming: without a scroll wheel, you are limited to the ctrl-alt MMB zoom. That works ok as long as you zoom selected more often to reset the focal point.
(this does not come from a Maya fanboy btw - I prefer Max for everything, but I too found its navigation scheme to be a problem.)
The orbit option Monster mentioned is super important too.