Maya - tumble tool weirdness.

Steve Schulze

I'm having all sorts of problems with the tumble tool viewport rotate thingy in Max. The first problem I ran into was the locked in orthographic view thing which is completely unworkable for anyone moving over from Max. Why this is set to on as default was a mystery to begin with, but it seems its to cover up for some really strange design choices. Unlocking the tumbling causes all sorts of interesting problems from viewports not jumping to their default positions to rotation refusing to rotate around selecltions and so on and so forth. In short Maya doesn't like roatating in the orthographic view ports.

Now, I can't work with this system. I need to be able to rotate my orthographic views without screwing everything up. How am I going to work around this?

EDIT:To clarify, what I really need most is a rotate around selection that works all the time.

MoP

I still don't get why people would want to rotate ortho views? What's wrong with Perspective?

I can't help you on this but I know this topic has been raised before so you should get an answer from a Maya pro soon enough.

MoP

Steve Schulze

Its impossible to line anything up properly in perspective. I can't understand how people put up with it...

Daz

Jackablade you are kinda cracking me up. Do you *have* to use Maya? I highly recommend that you dont! 'cos you clearly are never, ever gonna progress from wanting it work like Max. It aint Max, its different! You are not *supposed* to rotate the orthos! Ive been using Maya for about 4 years, and never in that time have did I feel the need to rotate an ortho.

Cant line anything up properly in perspective? What does that mean exactly? Simply change your camera atributes in perspective to be closer to isometric. ( focal length 100 ) Thats what I model in anyway.

If you cant work with that there is no helping you!



p.s how the hell do you ever get over ex girlfriends, change cars, move houses,jobs, or anything else that requires *change* ?

;-)

Steve Schulze

I've tried working without being able to rotate the orthos and kept instinctively trying anyway. To use your analogy, its like changing to a new car and continually reaching for the gearstick and hand break in the position where the old one was.

I'll get used to this program eventually. Either that or have a complete nervous break down. I suppose what I'll have to do is bind a preset focal length to a button so I can just jump between perspective and orthographic or something. Does that sound like the most logical way around this problem?

FatAssasin

I feel for you Stephen, I've used Max way more than Maya also. It's funny that people that have used Maya exclusively can't understand why you'd want to mess with the defualt cameras, and people that have used Max can't understand why you wouldn't. It's just what you're used to, neither one is the absolute right way. The main difference between the two programs is that in Maya the cameras are actual objects, not virtual viewports like Max. So trying to change them from their defualt behaviors will mess things up real fast. Your best bet is to take Daz's advice and go to the Perspective view, click View pulldown menu, click Select Camera, and then change the Focal Lenth in the Attribute Editor to something large, like 100. It turns the perspective camera into a zoom lens and basically flattens the view. And be sure to keep hitting your hotkey for focus so that it will rotate around your selected subObjects.

ndcv

[ QUOTE ]
I'll get used to this program eventually. Either that or have a complete nervous break down.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or both

The keybinding might be a good idea... the one other thing you could do (might be too much of a pain though) is to rotate the object rather than the camera. Maybe that would be painful enough to break the habit

Snowfly

Or, rather than forcing an ortho rotato cam, why not just strip that approach from your workflow. Not the most practical solution? It might give you some peace of mind...

If the cam starts straying away from your selection, just hit 'f'. That's all I ever needed to do anyway. From one ex-max user to another.

Daz

Haha yeah. Usually when I go back to the UK once or twice a year, I rent a car from Heathrow. I dont have too much trouble staying on the right side of the road ( well, left actually ) , but I always start off the journey by consistently banging my 'gearstick hand' into the door. The pain usually stops me ater a few attempts.
Thats it! Set up an elaborate electric shock treatment so that whenever you go to rotate ortho you get a few volts. You'll soon stop ;-p

MoP

Just to clarify, rotating orthos is not "3dsmax workflow"!
I've been using Max for years, and never felt the need to rotate the ortho views - in fact I find it quite annoying, if I accidentally rotate one then I have to hit Shift-Z straight away, whereas in Maya nothing happens. Hooray!

malcolm

I used Max for 2 years and Maya for 4, I haven't ever wanted to rotate an orthographic view in either package, I set up some rotoscopes in the orthographic views but those can only go so far, after that I do the final tweaks in the perspective view as you will almost never do a render in a orthographic view so it is probably a good idea to make your character look good in the perspective view above all else.

MoP

Yeah, what Malcolm said. The model will be seen in perspective (most likely) in a game engine, so why not work in perspective!
I still don't understand what you mean by "line anything up properly" in perspective...

Steve Schulze

When I want to get some vertices alligned or cut a nice precise line or anything like that, its far easier to get things in just the right position if you don't have perspective correction to worry about. Its something I've done since I first opened up Max and its never steered me wrong. Its not going to be something I can give up in a hurry.

I'll give the long focal length camera a go first thing tomorrow.

Snowfly

Jackablade you might like using 'Live' objects in Maya... that is making any object to behave like a grid. It becomes unselectable and you can snap verts to it until you make it 'not live'.
I'd assume that would be similar to working in an ortho view with the added advantage of being able to rotate around the made-up axis.
As for cutting nice precise lines, have you tried using the Cut Faces tool? It's comparable to using a bandsaw on your mesh.

malcolm

Jackablade, if you tap the space bar you can quickly go from one viewport to the next so you can go to the side view to do your cut and then quickly go back to perspective to continue working on the shape. As well if you want to work in the perspective view and get perfect splits and cuts you can cut your junk and then use the snap to point and constrain along y axis, hold down the v key and then drag the move arrow with some vertices selected, or use the snap to grid which is hold down x, I find I don't work much at all in the ortho views because I can make precise edits in the 3d view, also you can set your split polygon tool so it snaps between vertices in the center so you can create new edges and have them perfectly centered. Hope that helps a bit.