3ds max erratic viewport orbit

A_Seba

Posted this on Autodesk forums and received no response, so here goes:

When orbiting my model the centre of the orbit changes off centre even when I have edges/verts etc selected. This makes modelling extremely frustrating and impossible to do quickly.

What can I do to make the viewport consistently orbit around my selection or object.

Here is a GIF which shows the issue:

Noren

Lower right corner, second icon from the right - Change to "orbit sub object" . 

srsface

To me it looks like the object's pivot point is far away from where its actual polygons are. Try setting the pivot to the center of the object.

Pressing Z to center the camera around your selection should also help with orbiting.

Sometimes problems may still arise. Then you could make sure the scene's scale is not totally off and that the object is placed at the center of the scene which is usually the default orbit point.

musashidan

The problem is that you have the orbit mode set to 'orbit point of interest' and you're using the viewcube to orbit. Just hold Alt+MMB on your mesh to orbit around the mouse cursor. Why are you using the viewcube?

A_Seba

Thanks all, it doesn't seem to have gone entirely while orbiting using the viewcube but Alt+MMB works fine, I'll get used to that instead.

musashidan

A_Seba said:

Thanks all, it doesn't seem to have gone entirely while orbiting using the viewcube but Alt+MMB works fine, I'll get used to that instead.

that's what I'm saying to you, the viewcube won't work properly with orbit point of view because it relies on screenspace raycasting. If your cursor is up on the viewcube then it has no point of interest on your model to reference.

Why on earth would you want to use the viewcube exclusively to navigate a 3d viewport? The first thing I do when I install a new Max is disable the viewcube/steering wheel.

A_Seba

musashidan said:

A_Seba said:

Thanks all, it doesn't seem to have gone entirely while orbiting using the viewcube but Alt+MMB works fine, I'll get used to that instead.

that's what I'm saying to you, the viewcube won't work properly with orbit point of view because it relies on screenspace raycasting. If your cursor is up on the viewcube then it has no point of interest on your model to reference.

Why on earth would you want to use the viewcube exclusively to navigate a 3d viewport? The first thing I do when I install a new Max is disable the viewcube/steering wheel.

The viewcube was how I navigated the viewport all the time untill you made me aware of Alt+MMB, I'm still new to all this, still a lot of tutorials to watch.

musashidan

Haha! Are you a sadist?

Learning any 3D software.......very, very first thing you do is learn the viewport navigation hotkeys.

Also, in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, Max's nav tool(and camera controls) icons are located: zoom/pan/orbit

deatonjc288

The units when imported can mess up like that