View and Camera problems....

Yep… nothing, same problem and no change. I closed Blender and opened the file up again; nothing.
What does that setting do?
I just changed something in preferences and nothing happened, this means its going to come back and bite me in the ass later!
GRIN!

Do you know where blender saves prefs in windows?
To delete all of them, to download a fresh build from buildbot.
A fresh install.

Meanwhile, before you delete everything, lol
file menu, load factory settings. Try it.
Prefs/File/on the right, Load UI Please, uncheck this. Save prefs.

We ll find it Mealea, something wear happens there.
On the other hand, this could happen to you only.
And, if this happens to you, it will happen to all of us now.
Blender metaphysics.

Build bot? I need buildbot to zoom in on things?
I have had this problem for YEARS on many different computers and dozens of versions of Blender, its not the instal Im using.
Im not deleting anything, Im trying to draw stuff, this file was just a VERY low polygon example of what is happening.
The exact same thing happens with a single object as well this just gave me other objects to select and deselect.
Can you zoom in on that object in the corner?
If so GREAT!
If not, WHY?

hmmm…
http://buildbot.net/
doesn’t seem exactly helpful…
Is that even what you are talking about?

Download a new build!!!
http://builder.blender.org/download/
OK, let’s stay cool
On prefs, file, load UI uncheck it.
Try to reload the blend you uploaded.
Try to find what happens to your blend because something weird happens.
However, Load UI unchecked (my settings) cleans the problem whatever it is.

Nothing wrong with the file as I’ve said before you need to hit numpad dot (.) to bring the viewports point of view or the camera closer to the object (select object first) and reset the zoom. Do not use Shift+C as it will move the point of view back so it can frame the whole scene. No need to break the keyboard :slight_smile:

Mealea!!!

Welcome to blenderartists you crazy woman!

OK. Now on to your problem. This will be sort of hard to explain but I hope I can make it.

First of all, on that file with the apt name:

I don’t think locking the view to the camera will help you much unless you are already good at doing transforms in 3D space. To make things easier and more intuitive for you, I am sure you will find the fly navigation very useful.

To enable this press shift - F. Now you can move the viewport with WASD buttons and look wih the mouse. Q and E buttons go up/down. To confirm your position press left mouse button.

Now on to explain what the heck happened to most of you:

Perspective mode
Here zooming means moving the actual viewport position (ie where you or your eyes, as a viewer reside) towards an invisible point in 3D space.

This invisible point usually - but not always! - acts as a pivot for viewport rotation. It is the point around which the viewport is rotated when we are rotating with the Middle Mouse. There are cases (such as enabling rotate around selection) where the point does not act as a rotation pivot anymore, but it does still act as a limit for zooming. I don’t know if this is sane but personally, I’ve been confused by this system as well. Now to make this work, there are a few shortcuts that essentially reset this zooming pivot in 3D space:

Numberpad . resets it at the center of active object and pushes the camera far away enough to make the full object visible.
Shift - C will reset it at the mean point of all objects in the scene and push the camera far away enough to make all objects visible.

The initial problem by sanctuary is a non issue indeed because, as explained the zoom pivot after pressing Shift-C is not at the center of the object anymore. So zooming in just zooms to some point in space (the mean point of all object origins in the scene - camera, light, cube).
I think that it is less confusing to select and use Numpad . every time one wants to focus on different objects, so that one can set the zoom point at the new object’s origin.

In addition, perspective mode can introduce clipping because the viewpoint can actually pass through objects (remember, the viewpoint is moving)! This will happen once the visible objects pass one of the 6 clip planes. 4 of those planes are visible and they are the borders of your viewport, but two of those are invisible; the near and far clip plane. The distance of those two clipping planes from the view point can be controlled by the viewport options presented previously by Sanctuary in post #2. So if your zoom pivot is the center of an object, you may notice the center getting clipped if you zoom too close, exactly due to the clipping plane being far away from the eye point. This does not mean that the viewpoint has passed the zoom pivot! It means that the object center is closer to the viewpoint than the near clipping plane distance!

Orthographic Mode
Here things are simpler and more confusing too. Moving should not influence the size of the objects (think about it, why should it, if there’s no perspective distortion?) so instead we use a trick: we scale the viewport homogenously to give the user some sense of zooming. The viewpoint is still being moved internally but you don’t see that because it doesn’t really affect the displayed result. Ideally we should clip with the far and near clipping planes but it seems that we do not change those at all while the user is in orthographic mode. Perhaps this is good, perhaps this is bad. I think it is better than having your objects clipped.

All those make sense if you sort of understand how the system works but there may be some way to make this not require two full pages of text to explain. What is good about this system is that it allows orbiting around a certain point in 3D space which makes examining a model easy. However, the invisibility of various pivot points makes this system hard to conceptualize.

Wow the whole thing is messed up, we just want to zoom to a friggin object without to much hassle that’s all :).
Dont get me started with other shortcuts, Sift+H then Numpad dot it’s the same as Numpad slash or Shift+C almost same as Alt+Home, potato potahto.
Damn!!! :slight_smile:

As Psy-Fi says - use NP dot. If that’s closer to the point you would want to see again, sacrifice your Camera as a waypoint - Ctrl-Alt-NP zero.
You then can return back at any moment by clicking zero on NP. To overcome mouse wheel jumps while zoomed in (it shoots over the point you zoom in usually if you’re on limit) use MMB and for me on linux it’s Ctrl-Shift: move mouse forth and it will zoom normally while clipping starts.

MealeaYing, i was able to fly to every face on your object and scribble it using Dynatopo 2px brush. I just needed to hit NP dot once to get out of your ‘steady’ position.

Edit: Unfortunately blend fileturned into 54 Mb monster after that :D. Don’t think i’ll re-upload it.
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/68333

I changed both the start and end values and it worked…but i couldn’t tell you what I did :]

So, we all can handle mealea’s blend file by clicking NP .
Mealea can’t. I really have no idea what causes it.

Anyone has an idea what Prefs/interface/CameraParentLock does?
There isn’t any parent on Mealea’s blend file
Unchecking it also unlocks the scene and we can navigate. Why so?

I forgot to mention:
To test Mealea’s blend file you have to enable Load UI on prefs/file
However, unchecking it, (I always do), there’s no issue on navigation at all.

Good News. The whole thing can be solved by enabling one option in the user preferences., has been there all the time :).

So, User Preferences /Interface and enable “Auto Depth”.

By doing this that imaginary point in the scene that the camera tries to zoom will be placed under the mouse pointer so you can scatter objects anywhere and as long as you point the mouse at them you’ll be able to zoom right at them .

@ michalis
Camera Parent Lock in a nutshell.
Make the cube parent of the camera, enable camera parent lock, normally you move the cube so camera can follow, now you can do the same inside camera view with Shift +F , camera will keep the same distance in relation to the parent, no need to move the parent itself.
Why is like that , I don’t know .

Argh… never had checked more than Zoom To Mouse Positon and Rotate Around Selection besides what comes checked in defaults. Since i found these i’ve never felt lost in some tangled mesh.
Now, in the 2.7 from builder, there’s option N panel, near Lock Camera to View (which i do not like for some reason), called Lock To Cursor.
That is something i’ll be using for sure, check it out! You need to check Cursor Depth in User Prefs too.

@ramboblender
Auto Depth!!!
Thank you.
Great find, never tried it.
Interesting

Here’s what I found
when NP. OK we can zoom to the object.
But, not more than its center of the mass. This is how it supposed to work
Fine so far.

However
try a subd apply cube by example.
Enter edit mode
Zoom into the sphere/cube and select a face at the back side of the mesh.
NP. and you can zoom on this single face.
Fine so far, right?
Go to object mode and try to zoom to the object.
Now blender zooms far behind the mesh.
What’s happening here?
This will turn to the normal behavior after NP. again.

One last thing warning.
It may fail to work if you have “Rotate Around Selection” enabled.
I guess we can’t have both enabled.

That’s the whole point of getting rid of zoom limit, going throgh the mesh and not getting stuck.
I guess it’s good for ppl who don’t like pressing NP. :slight_smile:

So…
Zooming and panning is complicated…
right?
Does it need to be?
No matter how hard I try I can’t come up with a good reason why this should be so complex.

Let me get this right:
I need to make plans when I want to move my view.
I need to make plans when I want to zoom my view.
I need to make plans when I want to pan my view.
I need to plan these according to a bunch of numpad commands that often defeat what I was trying to do.
I need to plan the numpad settings according to a number of things in User Preferences.
I need to plan how I want to use the camera.
I need to plan on it working totally differently on HOW I move it.
I need also to plan on how it works if I have it locked to the view.
I need to plan on how to move it with no lock, this opens more options such as Shift F, which I suck at, I don’t have the fine motor control to fly around in stuff like this, I get lost quickly.
If I lock my camera to the view I have to expect that all of my view settings will compound the complexity of my camera movement, zooming and panning.
If I do NOT lock my camera than I have to plan for it acting like some other objects but apparently not all… or something… Im lost…
I plan on drinking the better part of a bottle of wine before zooming around in Blender again.

Psy-Fi:
I read all of what you posted and tried it too, I understand better now but like it even less than when I thought it was just a bug, no I think someones gone insane and turned a simple concept into a complex problem.
Shift F is out, I suck at that.
Using the camera without it being locked to the view is out as it takes ages to get it where I want it and its in my way the rest of the time even though I know I COULD hide it.
Numpad “.” zooms me out, not what I want… um… holy sh*t!
[EDIT: Suddenly it makes sense, and that leads me to interrupt all of the above THANK YOU PSY-FI AND EVERYONE ELSE!
Wait… something you said made me understand the ACTUAL problem (I still think its all too complex). and that leads me to understand what RamboBlender did:

RamboBlender got it!
And I added to it.
In user Preferences under Interface in the middle section of the top
I now have:
Cursor Depth off.
Auto Depth on.
Zoom to Mouse Position on.
Rotate around selection on.
Global Pivot on (I don’t know what this does yet, it was on to start with).
Camera Parental Lock off.

NOW things ( in camera view with it locked to view)work, if I zoom in and zooming starts to bog down NumPad “.” works and then I simply keep zooming, AND panning works as expected! YAY!
Trying this in normal view (NumPad 1 for example) works the same way, but with some slightly nauseating perspective distortion that’s actually kind of fun, other than that its great…

Now to try edit a detailed mesh with tiny tiny bits of rigging in the fingers!

Gimme a moment and I will be right back!

If anyone has wiki editing allowance, lots of informations here should be added on the manual in that page :
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/3D_interaction/Navigating/3D_View

Because just imagine for a minute what you have not yet done here, imagine you’re not aware of the numpad . , you’re not aware of the user preferences, basically you’re a Blender beginner.

Then as every people starting with Blender will do, you try the functionalities and at some point either you get to press SHIFT+C by accident or because you have seen in the manual that :

Center Cursor and View All (⇧ ShiftC)

moves the cursor back to the origin and zooms in/out so that you can see everything in your scene.

And it was doing what you wanted to do by example.

And then you’re stuck, now you can’t zoom in, sometime you can’t even zoom out, you can’t pan the view anymore and even if you change the view (front/side/top/etc…) you’re still stuck in that nasty situation.

So sure, you all now about numpad . , user prefs and etc… but the guy that is learning Blender will then refer to the manual about what he just did and will see that nowhere the problem he’s going through is mentionned, the same as nowhere is then mentionned the methods to get out ( numpad . , user prefs etc…).

That page really needs updating.