3ds max move gizmo question

breakneck

Anyone else bugged by the fact that the move gizmo doesn't have an auto facing function, similar to the scale gizmo?(in perspective viewport)
Is there a setting for this, or anyone heard of a way to script changes to the gizmo?

for example, the scale gizmo will always face you as you rotate around in the viewport:


while the move tool doesn't auto face and a lot of the time you will see a situation like this, where the move along xy plane is facing away from you in the viewport:


its just one of those little things that causes me to mis-click when trying to select a specific part of the move gizmo. And it has bugged me for far too long.
thanks for any tips or tricks!

paulsvoboda

I've never really run into this issue as most of my movement in different axes is done in orthagraphic or snapping it to the grid But this page may be of some help, it doesn't exactly fix the problem your having but has a pretty useful script which may make the move tool more useful for you:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45909

Oniram

you could just scale your gizmo up. that will make it easier to select the proper handle. ive never really had a problem with that.

if you need your gizmo to actually face you for a specific movement you could just set it to screen.

one reason i dont think it changes is because it matches the gizmo at the bottom left hand corner of the window to show which way you're oriented. if the z axis ever shifted to the bottom of the gizmo im sure people may get confused as to which way is actually up.

passerby

can max do what maya does where you can control click a axis on the gizmo to restrict tp a plane that way instead of having to click the plane in the gizmo.

Oniram

well when you click on a specific axis it locks that one in memory. so if you click on X then click on the object/vert/edge etc to move it.. it will move only on the X

deep4d

I never noticed this before, but now that I have, thanks to this post, I have something new to obsess over.

breakneck

thanks for the replies.
paulsvoboda: good link, I've looked it over and I'm quite confused. guess I should just plug that script in and see what happens.

Oniram: making the gizmo plane handles bigger definitely separates their selection spaces, which makes selecting them a little easier.

anyone else have any ideas?

Mark Dygert

I agree its can be hard to work with and would be easier if it was oriented to screen space however it represents a coordinate system. That system has a + and - side to it. When you're looking at it from the negative side, you're looking at the back of the coordinate system. It would be like modeling on the bottom of the world space grid and treating the bottom viewport as the top...

There would need to be some crazy in-between transformation algorithm that translated it in reverse.


If you're always working with the negative side of the object you might want to rotate the local pivot (Hierarchy Tab > Affect pivot only > Rotate the pivot) or rotate the object so it faces the positive side of the coordinate system and use the reset xform utility.

Personally I don't have a problem selecting the axis planes through the back of the gizmo but I do remember that being a bit of an issue on older versions of max9 and lower.