Zoom and rotation control in perspective mode. Why does the zoom have to slow down to a crawl at some arbitrary location? I end up having to turn around 180 degrees and zooming out backwards to get to where I want to go, and often even that doesn’t help because the center of rotation for the model is in some strange location, so when I try turning around 180 degrees again, I maybe further out than where I started. And yes, switching to orthographic mode often helps, but it doesn’t if something else in the model is covering the area I’m trying to work on; and transparent mode is the best, except when there’s too much stuff. Couldn’t the viewpoint be flown like a space-ship? Seriously. Speed and acceleration scaled by distance to the nearest selected vertex; and each turning step of the mouse-wheel translates to a burst of the thrusters; and ASDW control vertical and lateral thrusters, and dragging the mouse with the shift key pressed re-orients your view. And I say the shift key because I’m having to take pain-killers my right hand’s middle finger hurts so much.
And a couple suggestions --though I’m not sure this is the proper forum for suggestions; forgive my ignorance if it isn’t:
In orthographic view, and when aligned with the grid (numpad 1-3-5), there’s no reason why we couldn’t have 2 axis position of the cursor shown in a corner of the screen all the time. Would be very handy, specially when trying to make straight and evenly spaced cuts; and you can’t zoom in to see the grid closer when cutting…
90 degree rolls of the view. I use the Shear transform a lot, but it always shears horizontall, so when I need to shear something vertically I have to either turn my whole model 90 degrees, or turn my view by alternately draggin up one side of the screen and down the other, and trying to get the view as straight as possible.
And one more: Ability to highlight something without selecting it. If I’m working on a bunch of subdivision lines inside a quad, in transparent mode, say, trying to visually adjust vertexes to be coplanar with the quad, it would help enormously, to be able to highlight the edges of the quad such that they stay highlighted as I select the various vertexes needing adjustment. As it is, after I select a vertex, I don’t know which of the million lines are the ones I’m trying to line up with.
I don’t understand your two questions very well, so I can’t help you there. But you can set the center of rotation for your viewport by selecting an object (or vertex) and pressing the period key on the numeric keypad.
“Enter” on the numpad I didn’t know about. But you’ll have to explain the C center bit.
I know that C centres the viewport on the cursor and shift+c places the cursor on the origin.
Go into the camera view and press Shift+F.
Mouse move -> turn
LMB -> Forwards
MMB -> Back
Spacebar -> Keep the camera here
ESC -> Cancel, put the camera back where it was
Go into the camera view and press Shift+F.
Mouse move -> turn
LMB -> Forwards
MMB -> Back
Spacebar -> Keep the camera here
ESC -> Cancel, put the camera back where it was
Go into the camera view and press Shift+F.
Mouse move -> turn
LMB -> Forwards
MMB -> Back
Spacebar -> Keep the camera here
ESC -> Cancel, put the camera back where it was[/quote]
For number 1, there’s a floating panel for that. From the 3D View menu bar, select the View Properties menu option. You can drag it off to the corner somewhere and continue to work.
Your problem with zoom and rotation is you are zoomed in too close. Set perspective and zoom out a lot. Then go orthographic and adjust your zoom to something appropriately close. Back to perspective and adjust the zoom again. (When you are too close to the center of the perspective view you begin to crunch numbers close to zero.)
I don’t really know about number 2 (I have never used shear myself…), but I thought theeth’s transform widgets did that…
Wow! Thanks guys. This is a golden thread. I’m saving it as html to my desktop so I can read it every morning as soon as I wake up. I’ve already got used to using ‘.’ (period) on the numpad, and I’m looking forward to all the other tips here becoming second nature for me. Thanks again.
They are all ( well most of them) in the manual and reference. Which I periodically access to suprise myself with stuff I’d forgotten or didn’t understand last time because of changing levels of experience.
Seriously. Speed and acceleration scaled by distance to the nearest selected vertex; and each turning step of the mouse-wheel translates to a burst of the thrusters; and ASDW control vertical and lateral thrusters, and dragging the mouse with the shift key pressed re-orients your view. And I say the shift key because I’m having to take pain-killers my right hand’s middle finger hurts so much.
