[3DS MAX 2o15] disable "move & select tool" free moving

nooks

hello.

is there a way to disable the "move & select tool" to move a selected object freely by mouse?
happened often enough that i move an object accidentally by clicking the mouse a bit to long and move the object a bit without noticing.


thank you.

Eric Chadwick

Yes, the Select Object tool. The button to the left of Select and Move. Default hotkey is Q.
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-6CEB9419-A182-430C-9C6C-FEE5799324E0

nooks

thanks, but not really the solution.
my question was more, if there's a way you can only move an object over the pivot when "move & select tool" is activated.

Eric Chadwick

Could you explain what you want, in more detail? "move an Object over the pivot" ??

Prot

Hi,

Do you mean to move your object only by interacting with the pivot?
I think you can't, the only way is to switch between Q and W shortcuts,  as Eric Chadwick suggested.

monster

Yeah, dragging the transform gizmo or the object will move the object. No option to change that behavior.

But you can do a couple of workarounds.

1. When things are in the correct position, tap x to bring up search. Then type Freeze Transform. Then later if you accidently move things, do a Transform To Zero operation. (Zero means the animation curve value, not the world position.) Setting those operations to hotkeys will make it faster.

or

2. When things are in the correct position, go to the Hierarchy Panel | Link Info | Locks. Then tick X, Y, and Z boxes. This will lock everything in place. And the transform gizmo will be grayed out on the axis you select. This is less convenient especially if you hand the file to someone else, and they'll spend an hour trying to get the move tool to work.

kanga

monster said:

...

2. When things are in the correct position, go to the Hierarchy Panel | Link Info | Locks. Then tick X, Y, and Z boxes. This will lock everything in place. And the transform gizmo will be grayed out on the axis you select. This is less convenient especially if you hand the file to someone else, and they'll spend an hour trying to get the move tool to work.

Yeah this is the trick. The problem with freeze in Max is you cant unfreeze one object, you can only unfreeze all. The above solution lets you lock and unlock items at will. Just dont forget to unlock them before handing the file over.

spacefrog

Yeah this is the trick. The problem with freeze in Max is you cant unfreeze one object, you can only unfreeze all.

If you are taking about monster's 1) , of course you can do a "transform to zero" to restore the transform  on each individual object you previously had selected "Freeze Transform". Simply use the ALT-RMB quad menu.
Another interesting option to completly lock the objects transform to world zero is assigning an empty list controller . You even can do this on individual axis , to prevent movement only on a specific axis eg. X ( requires an empty  float list )

You then only can move the object's  by activating "Affect Pivot only" or "Affect Object Only", which both work the same way then. But the pivot always sticks at 0/0/0

nooks

thanks for the replies. too bad. i already try to push the q button all the time. but sometimes you click a mesh and it switches instantly back to "move".

Altea

That is a stupid bad behavior from Max. Perhaps a vote could help:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/stop-max-changing-from-select-tool-to-move-tool-when-leaving/idi-p/7838999

Max changes continuously to move mode without being requested when doing multiple operations. For example step build and extend, you start with select, use extend and when using right click now you have move instead.

When you discover you have clicked the object with the move tool instead the select tool you always wonder if you have not moved a bit the object.

I simply would prefer Max didn't default continuously to the move tool. 

nooks

this.

nooks

is there a chance to lock an object in "world" (create) mode, but still able to work on in "modify" mode?
i already try to set everything at position 0 so if i move an object accidentally i can check if ive moved it later.

afb3d

I'm currently working on a small script to get around this issue. So far it's working great and feels so good when working in max but there's one big big......when you go into create mode, creating a box, plane light,etc....it stops you from creating anything because it goes to select object.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to detect if "create" is active to disable the script then enable it after.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Thanks

Revel

@_thatmilkman you can try to check it with isCreatingObject(), one way to use it is by using case of:

(
	case isCreatingObject() of
	(
		true:print "a"
		false:print "b"
	)
)<br>

afb3d

@Revel thank you, appreciate the help thankfully I also figure it out, someone pointed me to the command panel in the max reference. 

I've got a thread going here with latest code if you're interested. Looking for help to make the script better.

 https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2681614#Comment_2681614