3DS Max Camera Frustrations

CJFerguson · Jun 2015

So I've been reducing several long objects with big faces, and small areas of very small faces lately, and zooming into a small vertex on a large long object is such a pain in the ass. There are times when I get close enough to see it and it starts clipping out regardless of whether I'm zooming in with my mouse wheel, or with control alt mouse three. Has anybody any tips for using the max camera more effectively in these situations? There have been times where I'm reducing a triangle on a really long cylinder and it's just infuriating because I can't get close enough to even see the distinction between the outer edges and the triangulated edge in between them because the camera starts clipping out, or is too unwieldy to rotate around the piece of the edge I care about looking at.

Eric Chadwick · Jun 2015

Press the U key, for Orthagonal view. No perspective, but there's no clipping either.

Eric Chadwick · Jun 2015

Oh yeah, you can also press Z for zoom extents. If you have a sub-object selected when you do it, it should re-calibrate the Perspective view's clipping planes, giving you more precision.

CJFerguson · Jun 2015

I'll try ortho out. Yea I've been using Z. The only problem is if I use z for like a long edge because it's not a precise point, and it covers so much in the viewport, but I guess there's no better way to handle that. thanks

CJFerguson · Jun 2015

Also when I roll the scroll wheel out after having selected something on this scale and pressing Z. It still launches out an enormous amount. Like way way too much, and I was just wondering why the scroll doesn't seem to relate to the size of the object. It's almost like it's detecting that the scene is really large, which the scene isn't large, this is the only object in it, but it is fairly far away from the center of the grid.

Eric Chadwick · Jun 2015

Check your units? From the Help file
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU/?guid=GUID-1880558E-8D14-411C-8B7B-36B1A5A8A7C8

CJFerguson · Jun 2015

Actually yea, I just switched it to max units instead of centimeters and it's working better. Thanks.

Mark Dygert · Jun 2015

CJFerguson wrote: »

Also when I roll the scroll wheel out after having selected something on this scale and pressing Z. It still launches out an enormous amount. Like way way too much, and I was just wondering why the scroll doesn't seem to relate to the size of the object. It's almost like it's detecting that the scene is really large, which the scene isn't large, this is the only object in it, but it is fairly far away from the center of the grid.

You can also try using ctrl+Alt+Click Middle Mouse and drag, to zoom, it's often a little more precise than the scroll wheel steps.

3DS Max Camera Frustrations

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