Blender to 3DSMAX : A few questions

anaho

Decided to learn 3DSMAX , not out of necessity but I think it cant hurt plus having access to Mental Ray and maybe VRAY in the future can only be a boon. So far it does not seem to be that much different, however I have a few questions:

1.) I find the geometry snapping functions very unreliable. There are quite a few options, however I dont quite feel I can comfortably rely on heavily using them. Are there scripts to change the behaviour to something similar to what Blender does in Vertex snapping mode?
2.) The knife ( Cut) tool is "too sensitive" and has a tendency of creating double vertices. Any way to change this?
3.) How can you completely freeze a camera that is set as a viewport? I often have to modell from a set perspective ( Camera Perspective) and as soon as you touch the middle mouse button it completely ruins your camera alignment. Makes you go paranoid XD
4.) Is there a way of making UV seams more visible (fat) ? I really have trouble seeing them a lot of times. Is Textools worth using from MAX 2012 onward? Thanks in advance. anaho

Snader

2 - not a fix perhaps, but a help: the cut tool has two slightly different cursor icons depending on how it is cutting.


3 - [ctrl]+[c] creates a camera in the scene. You can then set any viewport to render from that camera. Using MMB will still move it around, but then you can [ctrl]+[z]. Maybe freeze/hide the camera or put it on another layer makes it unmovable - not 100% sure.

4 - Max shows UV seams as thicker (3 or 4 pixels) colored edges - green by default. I'm not sure what you mean by more visible. Oh wait. Did you turn visibility of the edges on?

green must be on to show edges
blue is the difference between 1 pixel wide or 3-4 pixel wide seams.

JamesWild

The UV seams, at least on the 2010/2011 versions I've used, have bugs and sometimes disappear, appear really thin (as though planes facing away from the camera) or suddenly turn thick.

I never found fix for it.

anaho

Sorry for the bump but some problems are still not solved: 3.) I just dont get how you are supposed to model from perspective match that way. I just cant believe that there is no information on this problem on the internet. Why doesn´t it work as intended? 4.) In 2017 am I the only person that the rotation tool constantly fails to lock on a specific axis? I dont remember having that much trouble with it in the past.

monster

3) I'm assumimg you are asking the same #3 question. Make a camera. Select the camera and camera target. In Hierarchy Panel > Link Info > Locks enable Move and Rotate locks.

4) Try setting rotation from Local to Gimbal in the Reference Coordinate System dropbown. This will show you the actual axis. If you are not animating, you can change your animation controller to TCB (Quaternion based). Then you don't have to worry about Gimbal lock.

gnoop

3.   lock camera in hierarchy/link info panel.  Also you could find Shift+Z a convenient option to undo perspective viewport  changing.  Probably you wouldn't need camera at all. Also you can set home view in view cube right click menu. 
You can change mouse navigation in customize >customize user interface>mouse

4.   you can make gizmo size bugger  in preferences>gizmos.  Or you can try F5, F6, F7, F8 buttons to chose axis  or customize  it to whatever your want .

ps.  Snapping is really still much better in Blender  IMO while 3d max did its best to overtake any Blender advantage.

kanga

Yup lock the camera in the hierarchy panel.

lately the knife tool can flip out on you so I make sure max saves 3 files, one every half hour as a backup.

Snapping has always been a bit iffy and takes some getting used to.

Uv seams are pretty thick (tick uv thick checkbos under the uvunwrap modifier) and right now they seem easier to see than the lender ones.