3Ds Max - Viewport camera settings?
Hi!
I couldnt find this anywhere and I am wondering if there is a way to change the viewport camera settings, so you can navigate the same way as in maya? I probably need to learn max now.
Cheers!
EDIT: Could any moderator please change the topic of this thread to something like "maya to 3ds max" or something, since it went off topic. Would be awesome
I couldnt find this anywhere and I am wondering if there is a way to change the viewport camera settings, so you can navigate the same way as in maya? I probably need to learn max now.
Cheers!
EDIT: Could any moderator please change the topic of this thread to something like "maya to 3ds max" or something, since it went off topic. Would be awesome
Replies
http://draster.com/component/page,shop.product_details/flypage,software-flypage/product_id,18/category_id,7/manufacturer_id,0/option,com_virtuemart/
Probably worth giving the trial a spin.
But honestly it just prolongs the pain of having to learn max's way of doing things. I also don't know if they've updated it to work with newer versions of 3dsmax.
I found it easier to just let go of the way things are done in Maya and just bang my head on the keyboard for a few days. Now I bang my head when I go back to Maya, ha! Sigh...
Well, Im gonna do it the hard way then!
cheers!
I duno how comfortable your MMB (middle mouse button) is but if you're gonna do it the max-way I suggest binding the MMB to some other mouse button.
My finger hurts after a few hours of MMBing in 3d max AND I'm using switcher (which means less MMBing than regular max). Mouse wheels just aren't a comfortable shape to press so often for me
I cant bind it to another button because all the other buttons are important hotkeys too, so I'm buying a new mouse just for an extra convenient button (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/5845&cl=US,EN) The thumb button on this is the whole black grip thingy, I hope that will be comfortable to push
Alternatively I was gonna get a mouse that had a 3rd click, like the evoluent one; http://www.evoluent.com/ but decided to give this new logitech one a try first
Cheers!
Now Im looking for something similar to the snap tools in maya. Only thing I can find is align, which I cant seem to understand :P I want a snap to vertex! Or something like that. Also found this autogrid.
Btw, I used max some years ago, but went over to maya because that was what my school was using. Now I can just remember some tiny bits and pieces. What happend to the shift+drag a face to extrude it? Now it just duplicates it.
EDIT: okay, so I found the "snaps toggle" button, but its really weird imo, really doesnt work like I want it to
I also find the angle snap pretty handy.
You can shift drag on an open edge to extrude, otherwise your stuck using the extrude tool or bevel. Personally I like bevel.
That 3d snap thing didnt really do it for me. Cant figure out why though. If youre in maya, you simply hold down "V" and pull all the selected verts lets say in the Y axis (which is the Z axis in max, right?). They all align with very nice where you want them. If I pull the verts in the Z axis in max they move in all kind of directions and doesnt really wanna align at all. Ive checked the vertex box in the Snaps Toggle settings and also the "use axis center as start snap point". I really dont get it
You get what I mean?
And yeah, remember that about the extrude now.
EDIT: Also, how do I get rid of the "selected object box"? I mean the ones that are outlining the object, but its just the corners of a box. Wow, Im horrible at explaining stuff ^^
Thanks
I know what you mean about Max feeling a lot more 'Precise' than Maya. I too switched fairly recently and for hard surface, Max wins hands down in my opinion. I still like to use Maya for anything organic though, it definitely beats Max at SubD with smooth preview, and something about making organic shapes in Max just doesn't feel as comfortable as Maya for me.
When you say you prefer the connect tool, surely you don't mean as oppose to Mayas insert loop? Thats the one thing I miss most from Maya!
creationtwentytwo: Well, I love the connect tool cause it is so precise, but I found the swiftloop. Its exactly like mayas, which is really nice
Anyone know any good snap plug-in?
I think you need to enable 'Axis Constraint' under the snap options to snap in only certain axis.
ciao
One thing though, Im done with my highpoly and Im gonna retopo it to a lowpoly. Is there any better way than using the "remove" tool? Cause when I use the remove tool on edges it doesnt remove the verts only the edges. It also removes things that I didnt even select. Any input?
And soon its time for some UV unwrapping. Any tips?
EDIT: Maybe a stupid question, but is there anything similar to Transfer maps?
Ciao
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/max-retopo
If you're going to build a low around a high this little script is pretty awesome.
If your using polyboost or max2010 there are some nice tools like this also.
Transfer maps is called 'Render to Texture' in max, simply hit the '0' key.
Im really enjoying max at this point
Read some in the f1 help thingy but I didnt really understand. If I wanna have 2 smoothing groups, one for hard and one for soft edges on one object. Is that possible? I tried the "smooth 30" and it almost worked. But when I select one edge and try to make only that one soft it affects the whole object. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
In Edit Poly, using the Polygon selection, scroll down in the toolbar. you'll see the 32 buttons for smoothing. Select the faces you want to smooth and give them one smoothing groups. If you want a hard edge, use a different smoothing group for those faces.
You assign groups of polys to a smoothing group. Where you want a hard edge the polys on either side need to be assigned to a separate smoothing group.
It's important to know that smoothing groups will create breaks in the mesh just like UV's do. So planning UV's seams along smoothing group breaks is pretty smart.
I think I get what you mean.
Im on to some UV mapping now. I dont know, but the "Unfold" seems to be really crappy. I might be doing it wrong ofc. Seems like there is alot of manual pushing and pulling compared to maya.
Im making a sword btw, here is where Im at with the UV mapping. Going reeeeaaaally slow :P
[ame]
Works best for organic stuff though.
Another good feature is relax which flattens out the uv-island instead of contracting it like maya. The part you relaxing can't be overlapping and welded with the other side thoguh. So you have to relax them seperately. But it will only take 1-2 seconds
Textools page
Polycount thread
For a lot of things I use;
- Flatten (sometimes with a higher average angle)
- Select an edge, grow that selection and stitch (I have it bound to S).
- Relax by face angles or edge angles (I have this bound to R and the floater bound to shift-R).
Or, Cylinder mapping, or quick planar and box mapping are also pretty reliable methods. I also have pack and MoPs Normalize script added to the right click quad menu.
UVTools is pretty good, especially now that its a button. But there are a few preferences it forces I don't like, like wire color. Some scripts I can't get to work and they don't undo properly, like stack, that never works for me. It just shrinks a few pieces and places everything in some kind of weird common center point...
Pelt is pretty handy and they have sped up the process a bit in recent releases.
Gotta say I'm definitely not missing deleting object history every two minutes.
hmm? I do this in max 2009 (space bar while mousing over without having to click). Works like Maya for me.
My solution to that problem was just using my Wacom for modeling. I can really recommend this to anybody who feels his hands/fingers/wrists hurting after too much middelmouse button clicking. It takes time to get used to but once you're good at navigating 3D with the Wacom pen it's really a lot more precise and pleasant.
And uhm Yozora, on your viewport maximize: how do you get it to maximize the viewport you hover over, without having to activate it? I foudn this a minor gripe, having to move the yellow border over to the viewport you want to maximise by clicking, but i thought there's no way around it ?
corv: Yeah, pelt seems like a great thing. I just cant seem to understand it just yet hehe. Ill get there soon I think.
Yozora: Downloaded textools, seems like a good one!
Vig: Is flatten the same as iron? Trying to get good workflow for the whole UV mapping
danshewan: Yeah, same here, but thats no problem for me atleast, its just one mousclick
I have another question: I cant find any "use last command" or something like that. Is there any hotkey for that? Also, is there something similar to layers? Groups are nice, but I cant select one object in the group, only the whole group. Even if I select one in the schematic view(which is like the outliner for maya, right?).
EDIT: could someone change the name of this thread? It went kinda off topic. Maybe to something like "Maya to 3Ds max" or whatever
Use last command I don't know of, don't think there is ?
I tried remapping Maximize Viewport Toggle to the spacebar, but it still requires selection of the viewport first so it doesn't actually help that much. If anyone can shed some light on how to do so by mousing over the desired viewport, you win an interwebs cookie.
Ark: What is assigned to the quad menu? haha
Okay, so Im still struggling with the same thing. I cant get it to not get stretched. I mean, a simple unfold in maya would solve this problem. There has to be something that straighten it out, right? I really cant find anything. Do I have to manually scale and whatnot?
Again its been awhile since i used max, but about the UV stuff, try unchecking the 'normal' box under the projection menu if its checked. IIRC it scales your projection to fit inside the UV 0-1 range and causes mass stretching.
Oh I just realized it works for me because I'm using Switcher. I bought switcher pretty early when I went from Maya to Max so I forgot that it was one of its features
Do I still win a interwebs cookie?
There is a "Repeat last action" hotkey in the "Editable Poly" group but I think it only repeats editable poly commands. I personally dont use this anymore because I've hotkeyed everything that would be worth repeating anyway.
For the outliner, you can download this script; http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/outliner
It still takes an extra right click to show/hide entire layers compared to Maya's eye icon ticking thingy but its a much better layer/object manager than the standard max one
You can use relax. Highlight everything and just hit relax. Theres this function in renderhjs textools (called relax) but I use a custom script written by mop that I edited to also include polygonal relaxing when in editable poly mode;
category:"TP"
tooltip:"Standard Relax By Face"
buttonText:"Standard Relax"
(
if (classOf (modpanel.getcurrentobject()) == Editable_Poly) then
(
$.EditablePoly.Relax ()
)
if classof (modPanel.getCurrentObject()) == Unwrap_UVW then
(
local uv = selection[ 1 ].modifiers[ #unwrap_uvw ]
undo "Standard Relax" on
(
uv.unwrap2.MoveSelected [0.0,0.0,0.0]
uv.relaxByFaceAngle 200 0.0 1.0 false
-- Now compensate for any scaling caused by the image aspect ratio.
local fixWidth = 1.0
local fixHeight = 1.0
-- Solution if no texture is being used...
if uv.getCurrentMap() == 1 then (
fixWidth = uv.getRenderWidth() as float
fixHeight = uv.getRenderHeight() as float
)
if uv.getCurrentMap() > 1 then (
fixWidth = uv.texMapList[ uv.getCurrentMap() ].bitmap.width as float
fixHeight = uv.texMapList[ uv.getCurrentMap() ].bitmap.height as float
)
uv.ScaleSelectedCenter ( fixWidth / fixHeight ) 2
)
)
)
If relaxing still produces non-perfect results then you need to reset Xform to fix this. Not sure why but sometimes meshes remember they got scaled in certain directions so it messes up UV-relaxing, reset xform is your friend! I made a script for reset xform and collapsing to editable poly as well if you want (just delete the last line if you dont want it to collapse the stack);
category:"TP"
buttonText:"Reset XForm"
toolTip:"Reset XForm"
(
on isEnabled do
return (selection.count != 0)
on execute do
(
for node in selection do
if (isValidNode(node)) then
ResetXForm node
macros.run "Modifier Stack" "Convert_to_Poly")
)
Resetting xform is almost like deleting history in Maya, just alot less often
For the hotkey category you can change it to whatever you want, I just have all my macros in one category to make editing hotkeys more simple.
Hehe, thought that might be the case. Looks like I'll have to invest in Switcher, or just kick my Maya habit altogether.
Enjoy.
http://bullace.net/
ok so not so quick but before you reset xform and collapse your stack try resetting transform and scale in the hierarchy tab first (4 little linked white boxes). This resets two of the main culprits of weirdness without effecting the pivot.
And yea I got pretty tired of accidentally locking things so I rebound space to maximize viewport toggle. It would be nice to have hover back but meh... I adjusted a long time ago.
I also bound Shift-C to walk-through mode (little foot prints down in the lower right corner). This changes your viewport nav to be like a FPS. Mouse look, W forward, A strafe left, S back, D strafe right, [ to speed up ] to slow down, right click to exit.
Walk through mode is great for environmental work, and positioning the camera in hard to get to places.
Oh yea and Z refocuses the camera on your selection.
As for UV stretching, uncheck "Normalize Map" in the Unwrap UVW toolbar. It's under the different projections and alignments. The result unwrap will be huge, so you will have to zoom out in the UV editor. But at least it won't stretch.