I have consistently struggled a bit in both Blender and Maya with clipping and the clip settings in the 3d view at extremely small scales. E.g. where the wireframe of geometry behind other geometry isn’t properly occluded.
Right now I am modelling an object to real world scale, around 7 cm by 5 cm. Small enough for the weird wireframe thing. I have modelled things at small scales before, and (sort of) know how to set the clip settings to fix it, but it never really ends up being very satisfactory. If I get the wireframe to display nicely, it’s impossible to zoom in very far on an area before it’s cut off, which is very annoying.
I don’t really have any idea what the deal is with clipping and I don’t understand why a small scale should be so different from a large scale. I feel lost, alone and frightened.
Also, is this something that would affect rendering?
Use orthographic viewmode (numpad 5) and both those issues go away, unless there is some modifier involved with it too. Working with Blender units and on a bigger scale is also an option since scale is arbitrary up to the point real scale is needed, at which point you can decide it. Some programs might even ignore the scale when importing, and you would have to input the scale anyway.
Clipping affects the rendering, but camera has its own clipping values in camera properties.
Off-topic:
9 out of 10 people who ask those kinds of questions annoy me. Not because they’re asking, not because there is anything wrong with the questions, not because there is a chance that I didn’t get the questions right and there might be some spesific issue to deal with or other corrections are needed.
It’s because those 90% manage to start their next sentence with “but” followed by whining and all the things they want to be able do just the way they want it, and are rightful to demand it from the other users in their tiny mind.
If you happen to be one of them, could you please go past those and instead explain why the offered suggestions won’t work in your case. Preferably with images/.blend file. Maybe that way better ideas or workarounds can be suggested to suit your needs, without having to listen to http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=56956
Thanks so much.
Also off topic: Might I ask what sort of question I am guilty of asking, that makes it so likely that I am a “whiny” person with a “tiny mind”? Or that I am more likely to force you to somehow listen to… a round object descending from the rear end of some sort of bovine? BTW, the logic of that escapes me. Is that a water buffalo? Why the round thing? Is it a water buffalo laying an egg? Is it an allusion to an obscure literary work? Some esoteric symbolism?
Seriously though, I would like to know what it was about my post you objected to.
I admit I asked a vague question. But it was on a vague topic, something that I have encountered in two different applications, and have worked around before. I was curious as to why the issue occurs (as you said, scale being arbitrary), and was wondering what other peoples attitudes and approaches to it are. I probably could have been a bit clearer about that in my post.
There is a technical reason for clipping. If clipping planes are too far away there is less depth precision for surfaces that are very close to each other, rounding errors resulting to what is called Z-fighting. Haven’t read this through but took a quick look and seems like that is also the source for problems when the clipping start value is too low http://www.opengl.org/archives/resources/faq/technical/depthbuffer.htm
Off-topic:
There is nothing wrong with your post. It’s just that many times when people ask about those issues and are working in small scale and in perspective viewmode, suggestions to do otherwise would affect the way they work so much that it results to complaining. I was tired so I wrote that down.
