3ds Max scene scale adjustments

danshewan

So, I'm finalizing the proportions of the scene I'm working on in Max before moving on to the optimization stage, and for some time I was fighting with Max's grid snapping.

I had originally set my grid spacing to 16 units (or so I thought), with Major Lines set to 8. It was only after struggling to force Max to behave that I discovered I had in fact, been using feet and fractional inches as my unit setup, not Max generic units. :poly127:

So now I'm faced with the task of rescaling the scene, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be punished for my error and forced to manually adjust the scale and dimension of all my modular, structural pieces to fit the now-corrected grid spacing. Is this the case? Has anyone else ever made this mistake?

As stated in my WIP thread, this is my first true attempt at building a modular environment, and so far it's been a fantastic lesson on how not to do things....

Thanks in advance.

sprunghunt

yep - it's really terrible when you find you've done something like this

However if you are already quite far into your project then you should probably just stick with the units you've got. It'll be less work putting up with the units you're using than it is to re-scale you're pieces to fit another scale.

danshewan

Well, I'm giving it my best shot at rescaling everything, and so far the biggest problem is Max's snapping - hardly intuitive, and even with the corrected grid spacing, it seems painfully inaccurate. This is before I even start scaling up structural elements that were modeled according to the incorrect grid spacing.

I've got my snapping settings to grid points and verteces, but when I try and align the pivot to the corner of a floor section, for example, even zoomed in to near-microscopic distances, I can't seem to get the damn pivot to snap to the vertex - it's very close, but not right on the vert.

It's also snapping the center of the pivot handles to the vert, not the corner of the pivot gizmo itself - is there a setting I need to change somewhere?

As such, not only am I having to fight with Max's wacky tendencies to veer off wildly into space when moving something along a supposed-axis, but even when I do manage to get it roughly in position, it's still off by a few pixels from the grid, or the nearby verts.

/rage

MR_Verkerk

I had this problem aswell, Max by default uses the excact position where you clicked instead of your selection to snap to the grid. So if you click 1 unit next to your vertex and snaps it to the grid, the vertex will snap to the grid with an offset of 1 unit.

You can fix this by going to you Grid and snap settings -> Options tab and select the:
use Axis center as start snap point. Then it will use the vertexes position instead of where
you click with the mouse.

Hope this helps:)

divi

i'd imagine it would be quite possible to figure out the factor by which you have to scale your stuff. make a 1x1x1 units cube, change system units, check its new size and do some math.

Shogun3d

Some guys at work really swear by using grids. A lot of the senior guys don't use it either. Strokes for different folks.

disanski

In max 2011 I think they did something to the snaps and it could be just illusion, but I think they work a little better. They also added this little yellow circle which lets you grab the vertex itself and snap it to what you need to. Here is a video in case you have not seeing it yet , but I presume you are still using earlier version. ( it is on from 2:00min )

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixqSMz9EnwE[/ame]

r_fletch_r

Random snapping tip: Make sure your snapping is contrained to axis contraints. its in the snapping options.
That makes snapping a joy to use. just grab a axis constraint and drag to the grid/vertex point to want to snap to and it does it for that axis(s)

Mark Dygert

Some notes I wrote up on snaps in max.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1098044&postcount=22

sprunghunt

danshewan wrote: »

I've got my snapping settings to grid points and verteces, but when I try and align the pivot to the corner of a floor section, for example, even zoomed in to near-microscopic distances, I can't seem to get the damn pivot to snap to the vertex - it's very close, but not right on the vert.

/rage

Pivot snapping doesn't seem to work very well. I personally just don't use it. I always use snaps to align a vertex to the grid.

If you want to precisely place your pivot try using numeric entry. Right click on the move tool to bring up the numeric entry box and type some numbers in.

danshewan

Some guys at work really swear by using grids. A lot of the senior guys don't use it either. Strokes for different folks.

That's interesting to know. I think for my next project I'll be much more vigilant and model to the grid much more closely, but for the sake of progressing with the office scene, I think I'll get things as close as I can without giving myself a migraine and tweak things in UDK if need be - thanks for the input!

Random snapping tip: Make sure your snapping is contrained to axis contraints. its in the snapping options.
That makes snapping a joy to use. just grab a axis constraint and drag to the grid/vertex point to want to snap to and it does it for that axis(s)

Man, thanks so much! That's solved most of my problems with snapping right there, can't believe I missed that all-important checkbox!

Some notes I wrote up on snaps in max.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showp...4&postcount=22

Thanks, Vig - some great info in there!