Orthographic to Perspective View

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

I was wondering is it just me who is having problems when trying zoom in on objects in perspective view. The thing is after switching to perspective view the view is away from the object, once I start scrolling I can zoom in only a little, not enough to view the object, but if I switch back to orthographic view the object is too close. Anyone else thinks that it should be reviewed and altered?

EDIT::

the other thing is that when turn around selection is on, if the selection is unselected the view will turn around a random point way outside of the selected point. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was to continue to rotate around that point that was selected previously? That way when you un select and forget about it you don’t have to reset views in order to find where everything is.

#2

Yes. We should have a zoom to mouse cursor.

#3

Yes, that would be nice too. But I was making a point about something else.

#4

There are some bulids with zooming at mouse cursor at graphicall. Zooming in perspective view uses world coordinates I believe so placing your object in the center of the screen with SHIFT + Middle Mouse Button dragging will get it where you need it for better controll. It just takes a while to get accustomes to working in 3D space. If you ever learn how to fly then you’ll discover that working in perspective 3D space is IDENTICAL to piloting an airplane. It’s especially funny when you’re in an open cockpit ultralight airplane and a bird craps in your instructor’s face! (Yeah, that really happened to my instructor, Sherman, in North Carolina.)

I assure you it’s just a matter of time. I have absolutely no trouble getting perspective view in any spot that I wish to view.

#5

There is this genius here on BA, that created an amazing script. his name is “chipmasque”. If you PM him, he would provide you a link to download and test his script called “BLenses”. Seems to be a solution to Blender’s camera accuracy and added enhancements.

He provides a couple of scripts, a cfg file and a GUI and also a couple of nice articles he wrote explaining the script and on camera and scene matching theory. I just downloaded this and I am reading it still, but even if this is not exactly the solution you are seeking, it is an amazing script, none the less. I think it’s amazing, so far, and I am now rereading the article in attempt to absorb what he’s teaching.

here is a link to the BA thread with his quicktime examples : Blenderartists thread for script

#6

The zoom you use in perspective mode is actually treated as a focal zoom (i.e. you go ALL the way out and it gets fisheyed), which has an in-zoom limit (and panning starts to suck at the limit too).

Easy solution is to recenter the camera on what you have selected using numpad period, which effectivly repostitions the camera to focus on the median of the selection at a reasonable distance. Not useful with only one vert selected.

There’s also fly mode, which is shift-f in object mode and lets you move the viewport camera’s postion most directly. Also has tilt centering buttions that can be useful if you used trackball mode for a while and want to switch back to … the other rotation mode thing.

/tired weaver

#7

thanks, you are the only person on this thread who said something that was actually related to what I was asking.

#8

Yeah, that seemed kinda odd. Maybe the Basics & Interface forum would have been a little less scattered about it.

#9

Yeah that’s a very important feature and it doesn’t really get explained enough IMO. I use the numpad dot all the time. When you are in object mode, it uses the purple dots of the objects as the camera’s rotation pivot and editmode uses the vertices.

I don’t have Blender near me right now so I can’t check but I think UV face select mode uses the object and not the face selection. If it does use the selection that’s fine because it should, if not I think it should be changed to use the selection.

It’s one of the modes anyway, might be pose mode.

#10

Yeah, it lets you scale to whatever you’re working on pretty well. I have it bound to a thumb button on my mouse :)…

You know, I was just thinking, and something I would love to have added would be unrealED’s camera movement: one mouse button is turn on camera axis (‘look’), the other button is move constrained to the K-Y plane, and the chord is move constrained to Z. It really fits 3d level editing in specific but it would be great for anything where you need to get around a whole scene or the details of a large object at a high zoom; anytime where your field is ‘bigger than you’.

Ideally having a toggle for something like this (or trackball) . . . hold down KEY and move mouse . . .

I’m just rambling now. :slight_smile:

#11

Oh it will change all right: starting with the next release the FaceSelectMode will disappear entirely and all uvmapping will be done in EditMode. So NumPad-Dot will let your view rotate around the selection of faces.
Changes are already commited to SVN (trunk).

Jean

#12

Are you sure of that?
I mean there are a couple of facts that contradict that affirmation:
1- the focal length of the OpenGL camera doesn’t change with MW (or Ctrl+MMB) action;
2- the perspective remains the same: it doesn’t fisheye up close, doesn’t flatten at what you suppose to be long focals.

Try manipulating the ‘Lens:’ parameter (which imitates the focal length of a 35mm camera) of the OpenGL camera and you’ll see how the perspective changes in the case of a real focal zoom. We don’t get that effect because it is not a focus zoom that is used but a camera dollying.

What MW (or Ctrl+MMB) does in a 3D viewport is really to bring the OpenGL camera closer or farther to the center of the view, IOW to dolly the said camera. This center can be defined by Ckey (center on 3D cursor), NumPad+Dotkey (center on selection) or automatically like when we go into LocalView (NumPad+/).

Now the original programmers didn’t think useful to dolly past the center of interest of that moment. The OpenGL camera (and the render camera too) is aiming at this point in space and it can’t go past it. If you want to dolly further just position this point further, around the 3D cursor for example (LMB in the view and then Ckey to center the view on the 3D cursor) or around a new selection (Numpad+Dotkey) and you’ll be able to dolly your OpenGL camera all the way up to your new view center.

Jean

#13

Hmm, all this seems much more difficult then it is done in carrara.

#14

I don’t really know Carrara.
What is your difficulty ? Choosing a center to the view is easily done (Ckey, Numpad+Dotkey or automated in LocalView).
I must say that I fail to see why would someone want to see past the center of interest of the moment but maybe you can explain?

Jean

#15

That’s good to hear, thanks for posting that.

Maya’s the same way though, except you have to press f I think instead of numpad dot.

I guess there will be ways to stop the perspective zoom locking by automatically shifting the centre but it still won’t be as controlled as doing it manually.

#16

Actually I did answer your question, you just didn’t understand my answer. I’m sure some of the veterans did.

You may have received several different answers because your questioned wasn’t too easy to read.

#17

I’m sorry if I misunderstood you here. Now I will actually answer your question:

No, I don’t think that blender’s zooming behaviour should be altered, though I remember that I found it a bit confusing at the beginning. But after I had actually read the manual page about zooming, I’ve got a good grip of it.

(But I’m really grateful that we will get zoom to mouse cursor in the next version).

#18

Acutally I used the wrong term; I thought it was doing a FOV zoom like your FPS sniper zooms, because it sorta felt like that, and I thought it went fisheye when you zoomed out. Just tested around and found that it doesn’t. (Does it do that if you have a camera view and zoom? Hmm.)

The funky thing is that because pan speed is a function of distance from the camera orbit when you hit max zoom you CAN’T pan, and at high zoom you can but it sucks.

Also, found something interesting. WAY scaled up a suzanne head to test this and found that the object center dot randomly changed size as I orbited it:
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/5117/crazydotonese1.jpg
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/3382/crazydottwoxe5.jpg

Looks like I capped the DIM sizes, wonder if that’s what did it…