4 4 CHAPTER
✦✦✦✦
In This Chapter
Using the Customize User Interface dialog box
Creating custom keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, quadmenus, menus, and colors
Customizing the Command Panel buttons
Loading and saving custom interfaces
Configuring paths
Setting system units
Setting preferences
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Figure 4-1: The Keyboard panel enables you to create keyboard shortcuts for any command.
Groups that have a large number of commands are split into categories. You can use the Category drop-down list to filter only select types of commands. This helps you to quickly locate a specific type of command such as controllers, modifiers, or Space Warps. Entering a keyboard shortcut into the Hotkey field shows in the Assigned to field whether that key is currently assigned to a command. You can Assign the hotkey to the selected command or Remove the hotkey from its current assignment. You can use the Write Keyboard Chart button to output all the keyboard commands to a text file. Using this feature, you can print and post a chart of keyboard shortcuts next to your computer monitor. You can also Load, Save, and Reset selected keyboard shortcut sets. Keyboard shortcut sets are saved as .kbd files in the UI directory where Max is installed.
You can find a reference of the available default keyboard shortcuts in Appendix C, “Max Keyboard Shortcuts.”
Tutorial: Assigning keyboard shortcuts Do you use both hands to control the mouse? If not, one hand is idle most of the time. If you can train this hand to control features using the keyboard, then you can be much more efficient. To assign a new keyboard shortcut to create a Sphere object, follow these steps: 1. Open the Customize User Interface dialog box by choosing Customize➪Customize User Interface. 2. Open the Keyboard panel, and select Main UI in the Group drop-down list. Scroll through the list, and select the Sphere Object command.
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With a list of objects available, you can quickly jump close to a desired item by typing the first letter of the item. For example, pressing the S key jumps to the first item that begins with an S.
3. Place the cursor in the Hotkey field, and press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S keys together. This enters the hotkey into the field. In the default interface, this key isn’t assigned to any command. Click the Assign button to assign the hotkey to the command. 4. Click the Save button to save the keyboard shortcut set as myShortcuts.kbd. You can load the resulting set from the Chap 04 directory on the CD-ROM. 5. The final step is to try out the shortcut. Close the Customize User Interface dialog box, press the new keyboard shortcut, Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S, and drag in a viewport to create a sphere. Customizing toolbars You can use the Customize User Interface dialog box’s Toolbar panel to create custom toolbars. Figure 4-2 shows this panel.
Figure 4-2: The Customize User Interface dialog box enables you to create new toolbars.
The Toolbars panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box includes the same Group and Category drop-down lists and command list as the Keyboard panel. Clicking the New button opens a simple dialog box where you can name the new toolbar. The Delete button lets you delete toolbars. You can delete only toolbars that you’ve created. The Rename button lets you rename the current toolbar. The Hide option makes the selected toolbar hidden. Use the Load and Save buttons to load and save your newly created interface, including the new toolbar, to a custom interface file. Saved toolbars have the .cui extension.
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After you create a new toolbar, you can drag the commands in the Action list to either a new blank toolbar created with the New button or to an existing toolbar. By holding down the Alt key, you can drag a button from another toolbar and move it to your new toolbar. Holding down the Ctrl key and dragging a button retains a copy of the button on the first toolbar. If you drag a command that has an icon associated with it, the icon appears on the new toolbar. If the command doesn’t have an icon, then the text for the command appears on the new toolbar. Tutorial: Creating a custom toolbar If you’ve been using Max for a while, you probably have several favorite commands that you use extensively. You can create a custom toolbar of all your favorite commands. To show you how to do this, we create a custom toolbar for the compound objects. To create a custom toolbar for creating compound objects, follow these steps: 1. Open the Customize User Interface dialog box by choosing Customize➪Custom User Interface. 2. Open the Toolbars panel, and click the New button. In the New Toolbar dialog box that appears, name the toolbar Compound Objects. After you click OK, a new blank toolbar appears. 3. Select the Main UI group and the Objects Compound category from the drop-down lists on the left. Then drag each command in the Action list to the new blank toolbar. 4. Click the Save button to save the changes to the customized interface file. I named my file Compound Objects toolbar.cui.
Don’t be alarmed if the toolbar icons show up gray. Gray icons are simply disabled. When the tool is enabled, they are shown in color.
Figure 4-3 shows the new toolbar. With the new toolbar created, you can float, dock, or add this toolbar to the Tab panel just like the other toolbars. Notice that some of the tools have icons and others have text names.
Figure 4-3: A new toolbar of compound objects created using the Customize User Interface dialog box
You can right-click any of the buttons on the new custom toolbar (which is outside the Customize User Interface dialog box) to access a pop-up menu. This menu enables you to change the button’s appearance, delete the button, edit the button’s macro script, or open the Customize User Interface dialog box.
To learn more about editing macro scripts, see Chapter 49, “Automating with MAXScript.”CrossReference
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Changing a button’s appearance Selecting the Edit Button Appearance command from the pop-up menu opens the Edit Macro Button dialog box, shown in Figure 4-4. This dialog box enables you to quickly change the button’s icon, tooltip, or text label. Each icon group shows both the standard icon and the grayed-out disabled version of the icon. Default buttons can also be changed. The Odd Only check box shows only the standard icons.
Figure 4-4: The Edit Macro Button dialog box provides a quick way to change an icon, tooltip, or text label.
If a text label doesn’t fit within the toolbar button, you can increase the button width using the Fixed Width Text Buttons spinner in the General tab of the Preference Settings dialog box.
Tutorial: Adding custom icons The Max interface uses two different sizes of icons. Large icons are 24×24 pixels, and small icons are 16×15 pixels. Large icons can be 24-bit color, and small ones must be only 16-bit. The easiest way to create some custom toolbars is to copy an existing set of icons into an image-editing program, make the modifications, and save them under a different name. You can find all the icons saved as BMPs and used by Max in the 3dsmax\UI\Icons directory. To create a new group of icons, follow these steps: 1. Select a group of current icons to edit from the UI directory, and open them in Photoshop. I selected the Patches group, which includes all the files that start with the word Patches. This group includes only two icons. To edit icons used for both large and small icon settings and both active and inactive states, open the following four files: Patches_16a.bmp, Patches_16i.bmp, Patches_24a.bmp, and Patches_24i.bmp. 2. In each file, the icons are all included side by side in the same file, so the first two files are 32×15 and the second two are 48×24. Edit the files, being sure to keep each icon within its required dimensions. 3. When you finish editing or creating the icons, save each file with the name of the icon group in front of the underscore character. My files were saved as Kels_16a.bmp, Kels_16i.bmp, Kels_24a.bmp, and Kels_24i.bmp, so they show up in Kels group in the Edit Macro Button dialog box. Copy these four edited files from the Chap 04 directory on the CD-ROM to the 3dsmax\UI\Icons directory.
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4. After the files are saved, you need to restart Max. The icon group is then available within the Customize User Interface dialog box when assigned to a command. Figure 4-5 shows the Edit Macro Button dialog box with my custom icon group named Kels open.
Figure 4-5: The Edit Macro Button dialog box with a custom icon group selected
Customizing quadmenus The third panel in the Customize User Interface dialog box allows you to customize the quadmenus. You can open quadmenus by right-clicking on the active viewport or in certain interfaces. Figure 4-6 shows this panel.
Figure 4-6: The Quads panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box lets you modify pop-up quadmenus.
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To the left of the panel are the Group and Category drop-down lists and a list of actions that are the same as the Keyboard and Toolbars panels, but the Quads panel also includes a Separator and a list of Menu commands. Quadmenus can include separators to divide the commands into different sections and menus that appear at the top of the standard interface. The drop-down list at the top right of the Quads panel includes many different Quadmenu sets. These quadmenus appear in different locations, such as with the ActiveShade window. Not only can you customize the default viewport quadmenus, but you can also create your own named custom quadmenus with the New button or Rename an existing quadmenu. The Quad Shortcut field lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to a custom quadmenu.
Several quadmenus have keyboard shortcuts applied to them. Right-clicking with the Shift key held down opens the Snap quadmenu. Other shortcuts include Alt+right-click for the Animation quadmenu, Ctrl+right-click for the Modeling quadmenu, and Ctrl+Alt+right-click for the Lighting/Rendering quadmenu.
If the Show All Quads option is disabled, it causes only a single quadmenu to be shown at a time when unchecked. Although only one quadmenu is shown at a time, the corner of each menu is shown, and you can switch between the different menus by moving the mouse over the corner of the menu. The four quadrants of the current quadmenu are shown as four boxes. The currently selected quadmenu is highlighted yellow, and its label and commands are shown in the adjacent fields. Click the gray boxes to select one of the different quadmenus. To add a command to the selected quadmenu, drag an action, separator, or menu from the panes on the left to the quadmenu commands pane on the right. You can reorder the commands in the quadmenu commands pane by dragging the commands and dropping them in their new location. To delete a command, just select it and press the Delete key or select Delete Menu Item from the right-click pop-up menu. The right-click pop-up menu also lets you edit the command name or flatten a submenu, which displays all submenu commands on the top level with the other commands. Custom quadmenus can be loaded and saved as menu files (with the .mnu extension). The Quads panel also includes an Advanced Options button. Clicking this button opens the Advanced Quad Menu Options dialog box, shown in Figure 4-7. Using this dialog box, you can set options such as the colors used in the quadmenus. Changes to the Advanced Quad Menu Options dialog box affect all quadmenus. You can load and save these settings to files (with the .qop extension). The Starting Quadrant determines which quadrant is first to appear when the quadmenu is accessed. You can select to change the colors for each quadmenu independent of the others. The column with the L locks the colors so they are consistent for all quadmenus if enabled. The remainder of the Advanced Quad Menu Options dialog box includes settings for controlling how the quadmenus are displayed and positioned, as well as the fonts that are used. The Animation section lets you define the animation style that is used when the quadmenus appear. The animation types include None, Stretch, and Fade. The Stretch style slowly stretches the quadmenus until they are full size over the designated number of steps, and the Fade style slowly makes the quadmenus appear.
I personally don’t like to wait for the quadmenus to appear, so I keep the Animation setting set to None.
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Figure 4-7: The Advanced Quad Menu Options dialog box lets you change quadmenu fonts and colors.
Customizing menus The Menus panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box allows you to customize the menus used at the top of the Max window. Figure 4-8 shows this panel.
Figure 4-8: You can use the Menus panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box to modify menus.
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This panel includes the same Group and Category drop-down lists and the Action, Separator, and Menus panes found in the Quads panel. You can drag and drop these commands on the menu pane to the right. Menus can be saved as files (with the .mnu extension). In the menu pane on the right, you can delete menu items with the Delete key or by right-clicking and selecting Delete Item from the pop-up menu.
If you place an ampersand (&) character in front of a custom menu name letter, that letter is underlined and can be accessed using the Alt key; for example, Alt+F opens the File menu.
Tutorial: Adding a new menu Adding a new menu is easy to do with the Customize User Interface dialog box. For this example, you tack another menu for the Collapse utility on the end of the Tools menu. To add another menu item to the Tools menu, follow these steps: 1. Choose Customize➪Customize User Interface to open the Customize User Interface dialog box. 2. Click the Menus tab to open the Menus panel. 3. In the top-right drop-down list, select Main UI from the Group drop-down list and Tools from the Category drop-down list. The current Tools menu opens in the right pane. 4. Locate the Collapse Stack menu item in the Action list, drag it to the right, and drop it right after the Channel Info Editor menu item. As you drag, a blue line indicates where the menu will be located. 5. Click the Save button to save the menu as a file. You can find the customized menu from this example in the Chap 04 directory on the CD-ROM. After you save the new menu file, you need to restart Max before you can see the changes. You can reset the default UI by choosing Customize➪Revert to Startup Layout. Customizing colors Within Max, the colors often indicate the mode in which you’re working. For example, red marks animation mode. Using the Colors panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box, you can set custom colors for all Max interface elements. This panel, shown in Figure 4-9, includes two panes. The upper pane displays the available items for the interface selected in the Elements drop-down list. Selecting an item in the list displays its color in the color swatch to the right. The lower pane displays a list of the custom colors that can be changed to affect the appearance of the interface. For example, Highlight Text isn’t an element; it’s an interface appearance. The Scheme drop-down list can alter the color scheme between custom colors and the Windows Default Colors. You can save custom color settings as files with the .clr extension. You can use the Apply Colors Now button to immediately update the interface colors.
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Figure 4-9: You can use the Colors panel of the Customize User Interface dialog box to set the colors used in the interface.
Customizing Modify and Utility Panel Buttons The Modify panel and the Utilities panel in the Command Panel both include a button called Configure Button Sets that allows you to configure how the modifiers are grouped and which utility buttons appear in the Utilities panel. In the Modify panel, the Configure Modifier Sets button is the right-most button directly under the Modifier Stack. This button opens a pop-up menu that lists all the modifier categories. The top pop-up menu command is Configure Modifier Sets, which opens a dialog box, shown in Figure 4-10, when selected. Using this dialog box, you can control which modifiers are grouped with which sets. To add a modifier to a set, select the set from the Sets drop-down list and drag the modifier from the list of Modifiers on the left to the button set on the right. To create a new set, simply type a new name into the Sets field. After a set has changed, you need to save it with the Save button. You can find the same Configure Button Sets button on the Utilities panel. Clicking this button opens a similar dialog box where you can drag from a list of Utilities to a list of buttons on the right. These buttons are then displayed in the Utilities panel.
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Figure 4-10: The Configure Modifier Sets dialog box lets you group the modifiers as you want.
Working with Custom Interfaces If you’ve changed your interface, you’ll be happy to know that the Customize menu includes a way for you to save and then reload your custom setup. This feature is especially helpful for users who share a copy of Max.
Any custom .ui file can be loaded as the default interface from the command line by adding a –c and the .ui filename after the 3dsmax.exe file (for example, 3dsmax.exe –c my_interface.ui).
Saving and loading a custom interface Custom interface schemes are saved with the .ui extension using the Customize➪Save Custom UI Scheme menu command. When you save a custom scheme, Max opens a file dialog box where you can name the .ui file, and then the Custom Scheme dialog box, shown in Figure 4-11. This dialog box lets you choose which customizations to include in the custom scheme. It also lets you select the icon type to use. The options are Classic and 2D Black and White.
Figure 4-11: The Custom Scheme dialog box appears when you’re saving a custom interface and lets you select which items to include.
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You can load saved user interface schemes with Customize➪Load Custom UI. The default Max install includes several predefined interface setups located in the UI directory. The standard available interfaces include ✦ DefaultUI: Default interface that opens when Max is first installed. ✦ Discreet-dark: Displays the standard interface with black windows, backgrounds, and viewports. All the icons and menus are light gray, and many of the icons are different. ✦ Discreet-light: Same as the Discreet-dark layout, except the icons and menus are black and the backgrounds are all light gray. Many icons are different here, too. ✦ ModularToolbarsUI: An interface that breaks the main toolbar into many smaller toolbars that are easier to move and arrange. You can use both the Load and Save menu commands to save and load any of the custom user interface files types, including these: ✦ Interface Scheme files (.ui) ✦ UI files (.cui) ✦ Menu files (.mnu) ✦ Color files (.clr) ✦ Keyboard Shortcut files (.kbd) ✦ Quadmenu Options files (.qop) Tutorial: Saving a custom interface You can save personalized interfaces for later recall in the 3dsmax\UI directory where Max is installed. To do so, choose Customize➪Save Custom UI. To have Max start with your custom interface, follow these steps: 1. Customize your interface by making any desired changes. 2. Choose Customize➪Save Custom UI Scheme. The Save Custom UI Scheme dialog box opens. 3. Open the UI subdirectory (if you are not already there), select the MaxStart.ui file, and click OK. 4. Click OK to replace the existing file.
You can set Max to automatically save your interface changes when exiting. Select the Save UI Configuration on Exit option in the General tab of the Preference Settings dialog box.
Locking the interface After you’re comfortable with your interface changes, locking the interface to prevent accidental changes is a good idea. To lock the current interface, choose Customize➪Lock UI Layout (or press the Alt+0 keyboard shortcut).
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Reverting to the startup interface When you’re first playing around with Max’s customization features, really messing things up can be easy. If you get in a bind, you can reload the default startup interface (MaxStart.ui) with the Customize➪Revert to Startup UI Layout command. Using the File➪Reset menu command does not reset changes to the layout.
If your MaxStart.ui file gets messed up, you can reinstate the original default interface setup by deleting the MaxStart.ui file before starting Max.
Switching between default and custom interfaces The Customize➪Custom UI and Defaults Switcher menu command opens an interactive window that presents several options for selecting initial settings and interface schemes, as shown in Figure 4-12. At the top of the window, you can select an option, and then details about the selected option are displayed.
Figure 4-12: This window explains the benefits of the different initial settings and scheme choices.
The initial settings for the tool options list include Max, Max.mentalray, DesignVIZ, and DesignVIZ.mentalray. These different selections cause the default settings for the various controls to change. For example, the default renderer for Max is the Scanline renderer, but for the Max.mentalray option, mental ray is the default renderer. The schemes list includes the same custom interfaces listed earlier.
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After selecting the initial settings and scheme to use, click the Set button to commit the selections to the interface. The button with arrows on it in the lower left displays the initial information page again. Configuring Paths When strolling through a park, chances are good that you’ll see several different paths. One might take you to the lake and another to the playground. Knowing where the various paths lead can help you as you navigate around the park. Paths in Max lead, or point, to various resources, either locally or across the network. All paths can be configured using the Configure Paths dialog box, shown in Figure 4-13. Choose Customize➪Configure Paths to open this dialog box. The dialog box includes four panels: General, Plug-Ins, External Files, and XRefs. When Max is installed, all the paths are set to point to the default subdirectories where Max was installed. To modify a path, select the path and click the Modify button. A file dialog box lets you locate the new directory.
Figure 4-13: The Configure Paths dialog box specifies where to look for various resources.
The General tab includes paths for the following: ✦ AutoBackup: Directory where backups are saved ✦ Defaults: Directory where the various default settings are saved ✦ Export: Directory where exported files are saved ✦ Expressions: Directory containing expression files ✦ Fonts: Directory containing fonts ✦ Heidi Drivers: Directory containing the Heidi Drivers ✦ Help: Directory containing help files ✦ Images: Directory to open when loading images
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✦ Import: Directory to open when importing geometry ✦ Materials: Directory containing material files ✦ MaxStart: Directory containing programs to execute when Max is started ✦ PlugCFG: Directory containing plug-in configuration files ✦ Previews: Directory where previews are saved ✦ Render Presets: Directory where render presets are stored ✦ Scenes: Directory where saved scene files are stored ✦ Scripts: Directory where scripts are stored ✦ Sounds: Directory to open when sound files are loaded ✦ Startup Scripts: Directory containing scripts that load when Max is started ✦ VideoPost: Directory where Video Post output is saved
Personally, I like to keep all my content in a separate directory from where the application is installed. That way, new installs or upgrades won’t risk overwriting my files. To do this, I typically change the paths to AutoBackup, Export, Images, Import, Materials, Previews, Scenes, Scripts, Sounds, and Video Post.
Under the Plug-Ins, Eternal Files, and XRefs tabs, you can add and delete additional paths that specify where Max looks to find plug-ins and so on. The XRefs and External Files panels specify where to look for external resources and files. All paths are searched when you’re looking for resources such as plug-ins, but file dialog boxes open only to the first path. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to realign path entries.
Using the Customize➪Revert to Startup UI Layout command does not reset path configuration changes.
Selecting System Units One of the first tasks you need to complete before you can begin modeling is to set the system units. The system units have a direct impact on modeling and define the units that are represented by the coordinate values. Units directly relate to parameters entered with the keyboard. For example, with the units set to meters, a sphere created with the radius parameter of 2 would be 4 meters across. Max supports several different measurement systems, including Metric and U.S. Standard units. You can also define a Custom units system (I suggest parsecs if you’re working on a space scene). Working with a units system enables you to work with precision and accuracy using realistic values. To specify a units system, choose Customize➪Units Setup to display the Units Setup dialog box, shown in Figure 4-14. For the Metric system, options include Millimeters, Centimeters, Meters, and Kilometers. The U.S. Standard units system can be set to the default units of Feet or Inches. You can also select to work with fractional inches or decimal inches from the dropdown list. Fractional values can be divided from 1/1 to 1/100 increments.
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Figure 4-14: The Units Setup dialog box lets you choose which units system to use. Options include Metric, U.S. Standard, Custom, and Generic.
Using Custom and Generic units To define a Custom units system, modify the fields under the Custom option, including a units label and its equivalence to known units. The final option is to use the default Generic units. Generic units relate distances to each other, but the numbers themselves are irrelevant. You can also set lighting units to use American or International standards. At the top of the Units Setup dialog box is the System Unit Setup button. This button opens the System Unit Scale dialog box, also shown in Figure 4-14. This dialog box enables you to define the measurement system used by Max. Options include Inches, Feet, Miles, Millimeters, Centimeters, Meters, and Kilometers. A multiplier field allows you to alter the value of each unit. The Respect System Units in Files toggle presents a dialog box whenever a file with a different system units setting is encountered. If this option is disabled, all new objects are automatically converted to the current units system. The Origin control helps you determine the accuracy of an object as it is moved away from the scene origin. If you know how far objects will be located from the origin, then entering that value tells you the Resulting Accuracy. You can use this feature to determine the accuracy of your parameters. Objects farther from the origin have a lower accuracy.
Be cautious when working with objects that are positioned a long way from the scene origin. The farther an object is from the origin, the lower its accuracy and the less precisely you can move it. If you are having trouble precisely positioning an object (in particular, an object that has been imported from an external file), check the object’s distance from the origin. Moving it closer to the origin should help resolve the problem.
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Rescaling world units If you discover halfway through your scene that you’re working with the wrong units, you can use the Rescale World Units utility to scale up the entire scene or just selected objects. To access this utility, click the Utilities panel and then the More button. In the utilities list, select the Rescale World Units utility and click OK. The Rescale World Units dialog box has a Scale Factor value, which is the value by which the scene or objects are increased or decreased. If your world was created using millimeter units and you need to work in meters, then increasing by a Scale Factor of 1000 will set the world right. Setting Preferences The Preference Settings dialog box lets you configure Max so it works in a way that is most comfortable for you. You open it by choosing Customize➪Preferences. The dialog box includes eleven panels: General, Files, Viewports, Gamma, Rendering, Animation, Inverse Kinematics, Gizmos, MAXScript, Radiosity, and mental ray. General preferences The first panel in the Preference Settings dialog box is for General settings, as shown in Figure 4-15.
Figure 4-15: The General panel enables you to change the unit scale, among other options.
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The General panel includes many global settings that affect the entire interface.
The quickest way I’ve found to open the Preference Settings dialog box is to right-click the Spinner Snap Toggle button.
Undo Levels and the Reference Coordinate System The Scene Undo spinner sets the number of commands that can be kept in a buffer for undoing. A smaller number frees up memory, but does not let you backtrack through your work. The default Undo Levels is 20. The Reference Coordinate System setting makes all transform tools use the same coordinate system when the Constant option is enabled. If disabled, each transform uses the coordinate system last selected. Loading Plug-Ins and Sub-Material settings The Load Plug-Ins When Used option keeps plug-ins out of memory until they are accessed. This saves valuable memory and still makes the plug-ins accessible. The Automatic Sub-Material Assignment option, when checked, enables materials to be dragged and dropped directly onto a subobject selection. Scene Selection settings The Auto Window/Crossing by Direction option lets you select scene objects using the windowing method (the entire object must be within the selected windowed area to be selected) and the crossing method (which selects objects if their borders are crossed with the mouse) at the same time depending on the direction that the mouse is dragged. If you select the first option, then the Crossing method is used when the mouse is dragged from right to left and the Window method is used when the mouse is dragged from left to right. The Paint Selection Brush Size value sets the default size of the Paint Selection Brush. In the default interface, this size is set to 20. If you find yourself changing the brush size every time you use this tool, then you can alter its default size with this setting.
The Paint Selection Brush is new to 3ds max 7 and covered in detail in Chapter 6, “Selecting Objects and Setting Object Properties.”
Spinner, Rollup, and Vertex Normal settings Spinners are interface controls that enable you to enter values or interactively increase or decrease the value by clicking the arrows on the right. The Preference Settings dialog box includes settings for changing the number of decimals displayed in spinners and the increment or decrement value for clicking an arrow. The Use Spinner Snap option enables the snap mode. You can also enable the snap mode using the Spinner Snap button on the main toolbar.
You can also change the values in the spinner by clicking the spinner and dragging up to increase the value or down to decrease it. The Wrap Cursor Near Spinner option keeps the cursor close to the spinner when you change values by dragging with the mouse, so you can drag the mouse continuously without worrying about hitting the top or bottom of the screen.
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The Rollout Threshold value sets how many pixels can be scrolled before the rollup shifts to another column. This is used only if you’ve made the Command Panel wider or floating. The Use Legacy R4 Vertex Normals option computes vertex normals based on the Max version 4 instead of the new method used in Max 7. The newer method is more accurate but may impact smoothing groups. Interface Display settings The options in the UI Display section control additional aspects of the interface. The Enable Viewport Tooltips option can toggle tooltips on or off. Tooltips are helpful when you’re first learning the Max interface, but they quickly become annoying and you’ll want to turn them off. The AutoPlay Preview File setting automatically plays Preview Files in the default media player when they are finished rendering. If this option is disabled, you need to play the previews with the Animation➪View Preview menu command. The Display Cross Hair Cursor option changes the cursor from the Windows default arrow to a crosshair cursor similar to the one used in AutoCAD. For some actions, such as non-uniform scaling, Max displays a warning dialog box asking whether you are sure of the action. To disable these warnings, uncheck this option (or you could check the Disable this Warning box in the dialog box). Actions with warnings include topology-dependence and collapsing the Modifier Stack. The Save UI Configuration on Exit switch automatically saves any interface configuration changes when you exit Max. You can deselect Use Large Toolbar Buttons option, enabling the use of smaller toolbar buttons and icons that reclaims valuable screen real estate. The Horizontal Text in Vertical Toolbars option fixes the problem of text buttons that take up too much space, especially when printed horizontally on a vertical toolbar. You can also specify a width for text buttons. Any text larger than this value is clipped off at the edges of the button. The Flyout Time spinner adjusts the time the system waits before displaying flyout buttons. The Color Selection drop-down list lets you choose which color selector interface Max uses. Layer settings If you select an object and open its Properties dialog box, the Display Properties, Rendering Control, and Motion Blur sections each have a button that can toggle between ByLayer and ByObject. If ByObject is selected, then the options are enabled and you can set them for the object in the Properties dialog box, but if the ByLayer option is selected, then the settings are determined by the setting defined for all objects in the layer in the Layer Manager. The settings in the Preference Settings dialog box set the ByLayer option as the default for new objects and new lights. You also have an option to propagate all unhide and unfreeze commands to the layer. You can select Propagate, Do Not Propagate, or Ask. Files panel preferences The Files panel holds the controls for backing up, archiving, and logging Max files. You can set files to be backed up, saved incrementally, or compressed when saved.
The Files panel is covered in Chapter 3, “Saving Your Scene—Working with Files and XRefs.”CrossReference
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Viewport preferences The viewports are your window into the scene. The Viewports panel, shown in Figure 4-16, contains many options for controlling these viewports.
Figure 4-16: The Viewports panel contains several viewport parameter settings.
Although the viewports were the major topic in Chapter 2, “Seeing It All—Working with the Viewports,” the viewport preference settings are covered here.
Viewport Parameter options The Use Dual Planes option enables a method designed to speed up viewport redraws. Objects close to the scene are included in a front plane, and objects farther back are included in a back plane. When this option is enabled, only the objects on the front plane are redrawn. In subobject mode, the default is to display vertices as small plus signs. The Show Vertices as Dots option displays vertices as either Small or Large dots. The Draw Links as Lines option shows all displayed links as lines that connect the two linked objects.
I’ve found that keeping the Draw Links as Lines option turned on can make it confusing to see objects clearly, so I tend to keep it turned off.
When the Backface Cull on Object Creation option is enabled, the backside of an object in wireframe mode is not displayed. If disabled, you can see the wireframe lines that make up the backside of the object. The Backface Cull option setting is determined when the object is created, so some objects in your scene may be backface culled and others may not be. Figure 4-17 includes a sphere and a cube on the left that are backface culled and a sphere and cube on the right that are not.
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The Object Properties dialog box also contains a Backface Cull option.
Figure 4-17: Backface culling simplifies objects by hiding their backsides.
The Attenuate Lights option causes objects farther back in a viewport to appear darker. Attenuation is the property that causes lights to diminish over distance. In the Viewport Configuration dialog box, you can set Safe Regions, which are borders that the renderer includes. The Mask Viewport to Safe Region option causes the objects beyond the Safe Region border to be invisible. The Update Background While Playing option causes viewport background bitmaps to be updated while an animation sequence plays. Viewport backgrounds can be filtered if the Filter Environment Background option is enabled, but this slows the update time. If this option is disabled, the background image appears aliased and pixelated. For quicker refresh times, enable the Low-Res Environment Background option. This reduces the resolution of the background image by half and resizes it to fill the viewport. Enabling this option results in a blocky appearance, but the viewport updates much more quickly. Figure 4-18 shows a background of San Francisco at normal resolution (left) and low-res (right).
Figure 4-18: Background images can be set to be low-res to enable the viewports to update more quickly.
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The Display World Axis option displays the axes in the lower-left corner of each viewport. The Grid Nudge Distance is the distance that an object moves when Grid Nudge (+ and – on the numeric keypad) keys are used. Objects without scale, such as lights and cameras, appear in the scene according to the Non-Scaling Object Size value. Making this value large makes lights and camera objects very obvious. Enabling ghosting Ghosting is similar to the use of “onion-skins” in traditional animation, causing an object’s prior position and next position to be displayed. When producing animation, knowing where you’re going and where you’ve come from is helpful. Enabling ghosting helps you to produce better animations. Max offers several ghosting options. You can set whether a ghost appears before the current frame, after the current frame, or both before and after the current frame. You can set the total number of ghosting frames and how often they should appear. You can also set an option to show the frame numbers.
For a more detailed discussion of ghosting, see Chapter 29, “Animation and Keyframe Basics.”
Using the middle mouse button If you’re using a mouse that includes a middle button (this includes a mouse with a scrolling wheel), then you can define how the middle button is used. The two options are Pan/Zoom and Stroke. Panning, rotating, and zooming with the middle mouse button The Pan/Zoom option pans the active viewport if the middle button is held down, zooms in and out by steps if you move the scrolling wheel, rotates the view if you hold down the Alt key while dragging, and zooms smoothly if you drag the middle mouse button with the Ctrl and Alt keys held down. You can also zoom in quickly using the scroll wheel with the Ctrl button held down, or more slowly with the Alt key held down. You can select options to zoom about the mouse point in the Orthographic and Perspective viewports. If disabled, you’ll zoom about the center of the viewport. The Right Click Menu Over Selected Only option causes the quadmenus to appear only if you right-click on top of the selected object. This is a bad idea if you use the quadmenus frequently. Using Strokes The Stroke option enables another interface that lets you execute commands by dragging a pre-defined stroke in a viewport. With the Stroke option selected, close the Preference Settings dialog box and drag with the middle mouse button held down in one of the viewports. A simple dialog box identifies the stroke and executes the command associated with it. If no command is associated, then a simple dialog box appears that lets you Continue (do nothing) or Define the stroke. Another way to work with strokes is to enable the Strokes Utility. This is done by selecting the Utility panel, clicking the More button, and selecting Strokes from the pop-up list of utilities. This utility makes a Draw Strokes button active. When the button is enabled, it turns yellow and you can draw strokes with the left or middle mouse buttons. If you select to define the stroke, the Define Stroke dialog box, shown in Figure 4-19, is opened. You can also open this dialog box directly by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging a stroke with the middle mouse button. In the upper-left corner of this dialog box is a grid. Strokes are
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identified by the lines they cross on this grid as they are drawn. For example, an “HK” stroke would be a vertical line dragged from the top of the viewport straight down to the bottom.
Figure 4-19: The Define Stroke dialog box can associate with a command strokes dragged with the middle mouse button.
With a stroke identified, you can select a command in the upper-right pane. This is the command that executes when you drag the stroke with the middle mouse button in the viewport. For each command, you can set the options found below the stroke grid. These options define what the command is executed on. All defined strokes are saved in a set, and you can review the current set of defined strokes with the Review button. Clicking this button opens the Review Strokes dialog box where all defined strokes and their commands are displayed. The only stroke defined by default opens this dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-20.
Figure 4-20: The Review Strokes and Stroke Preferences dialog boxes list all defined strokes and their respective commands.
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One of the commands available in the list of commands is Stroke Preferences. Using this command opens the Stroke Preferences dialog box, also shown in Figure 4-20, where you can save and delete different stroke sets, specify to list commands or strokes in the Review Strokes dialog box, set how long the stroke grid and extents appear, and set the Stroke Point Size. Tutorial: Defining a stroke As you get some experience with the Max interface, you’ll find that for some commands you always use keyboard shortcuts, for others you use the main toolbar, and for others you use the menus. Strokes offer another way to quickly execute commands without the pain of searching the menus for a given command. To assign a stroke to a command, follow these steps: 1. Open the Preference Settings dialog box with the Customize➪Preferences menu command. 2. Select the Viewports panel, and in the Mouse Control section, select the Stroke option. Then close the Preference Settings dialog box. 3. With the middle mouse button, drag a “U”-shaped stroke in the active viewport. A dialog box identifies the stroke as not found. Click the Define button to open the Define Stroke dialog box. 4. The stroke (as you drew it) is displayed in the upper-left grid, and if you drew it correctly, it should be identified as ‘GJEFLI.’ In the Command list, select the Unhide All command and click the OK button to close the dialog box. 5. Use the Tools➪Display Floater to hide some objects in the current scene, and then drag a “U”-shaped stroke with the middle mouse button. All the hidden objects become visible. Choosing and configuring display drivers When Max was first launched, a simple dialog box asked you which display driver to use (see Figure 4-21). If you were anxious to get a look at Max, you probably didn’t pay much attention to this dialog box. However, weeks later when you happen to be looking through your video card information, you realize that your card supports other drivers like OpenGL and Direct 3D.
The Graphics Driver Setup dialog box displays the options only for the drivers that it finds on your system, but just because an option exists doesn’t mean it works correctly. If a driver hangs your system, you can restart it from a command line with the –h flag after 3dsmax.exe to force Max to present the Graphics Driver Setup dialog box again or use the Start➪Programs➪ discreet➪3ds max 7➪Change Graphics Mode program icon to restart the program.
Figure 4-21: You use the Graphics Driver Setup dialog box to select the display drivers.
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If you want to try out or configure the different display drivers, you can use the Viewports panel of the Preference Settings dialog box. The Viewports panel includes a field that displays the currently installed driver along with two buttons to Choose Driver and Configure Driver. The Choose Driver button opens the Graphics Driver Setup dialog box again. If you change the display driver, you need to restart Max.
The driver that you use really depends on the video card in your system. Check with the documentation that came with your video card to see what drivers it supports. If you’re unsure, use the default software driver.
The Configure Driver option opens a dialog box of configurations for the driver that is currently installed. The various configuration dialog boxes include options such as specifying the Texture Size, which is the size of the bitmap used to texture map an object. Larger maps have better image quality but can slow down your display. All the display driver configuration settings present tradeoffs between image quality and speed of display. By tweaking the configuration settings, you can optimize these settings to suit your needs. In general, the more memory available on your video card, the better the results.
You can learn more about the various display drivers in Appendix B, “Configuring and Installing 3ds max 7.”
Gamma preferences The Gamma panel, shown in Figure 4-22, controls the gamma correction for the display and for bitmap files.
Figure 4-22: Enabling gamma correction makes colors consistent regardless of the monitor.
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Setting screen gamma Have you ever noticed in an electronics store that television-screen displays vary in color? Colors on monitor screens may be fairly consistent for related models, but may vary across brands. Gamma settings are a means by which colors can be consistently represented regardless of the monitor that is being used. Gamma value regulates the contrast of an image. It is a numerical offset required by an individual monitor in order to be consistent with a standard. To enable gamma correction for Max, open the Gamma panel in the Preference Settings dialog box and click the Enable Gamma Correction option. To determine the gamma value, use the spinner or adjust the Gamma value until the gray square blends in unnoticeably with the background. Setting bitmap gamma Many bitmap formats, such as TGA, contain their own gamma settings. The Input Gamma setting for Bitmap files sets the gamma for bitmaps that don’t have a gamma setting. The Output Gamma setting is the value set for bitmaps being output from Max.
Match the Input Gamma value to the Display Gamma value so that bitmaps loaded for textures are displayed correctly.
Rendering preferences The Rendering panel includes controls for setting the Video Color Check, Output Dithering, and Field Order. In addition, you can set the Super Black Threshold, Hotspot Falloff, Background Anti-Aliasing, Default Ambient Light Color, and Output File Sequencing in this panel. Max also offers controls for playing an alert sound when a rendering is finished and settings you can use to determine the number of GBuffers. Other settings enable multithreading and a way to break up bitmaps into pages.
The details of the Rendering Preferences panel are covered in Chapter 43, “Rendering Basics.”
Animation preferences The Animation panel, shown in Figure 4-23, contains options dealing with animations. When a specific frame is selected, all objects with keys for that frame are surrounded with white brackets. The Animation panel offers options that specify which objects get these brackets. Options include All Objects, Selected Objects, and None. You can also limit the brackets to only those objects with certain transform keys. The Local Center During Animate option causes all objects to be animated about their local centers. Turning this option off enables animations about other centers (such as screen and world). The MIDI Time Slider Controls include an On option and a Setup button. The Setup button opens the MIDI Time Slider Control Setup dialog box shown in Figure 4-24. When this control is set up, you can control an animation using a MIDI device.
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Figure 4-23: The Animation panel includes settings for displaying Key Brackets.
Figure 4-24: The MIDI Time Slider Control Setup dialog box lets you set up specific notes to start, stop, and step through an animation.
You can use the Animation panel to assign a new Sound Plug-In to use, as well as to set the default values of all animation controllers. Clicking the Set Defaults button opens the Set Controller Defaults dialog box. This dialog box includes a list of all the controllers and a Set button. When you select a controller and click the Set button, another dialog box appears with all the values for that controller.
You can learn more about specific controllers in Chapter 32, “Animating with Constraints and Controllers.”
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Inverse Kinematics preferences The Inverse Kinematics panel includes Positional, Rotational, and Iteration thresholds for both Applied IK and Interactive IK.
To learn more about Applied IK and Interactive IK, see Chapter 38, “Manually Rigging a Character.”
Gizmos preferences Gizmos are controllers that show up in the viewports and provide an interactive way to transform objects. The Gizmos panel of the Preference Settings dialog box includes settings for turning the Transform Gizmos on and off. You can also set the size of the Move, Rotate, and Scale gizmos.
See Chapter 7, “Transforming Objects—Translate, Rotate, and Scale” for more detail on Gizmo preferences.
MAXScript preferences Settings for working with MAXScript are included in the MAXScript panel. These commands include options for loading Startup scripts, controlling the Macro Recorder, selecting the font used in the MAXScript window, and setting the amount of Memory to use.
Check out Chapter 49, “Automating with MAXScript” for more on MAXScript commands and preferences.
Radiosity preferences The Radiosity panel includes settings that determine how radiosity is processed, whether advanced lighting options are saved with the scene file, and whether Reflectance and Transmittance are displayed in the Material Editor. You can also specify whether radiosity is displayed in the viewports. You can also disable advanced lighting warnings.
Check out Chapter 28, “Advanced Lighting, Light Tracing, and Radiosity,” for greater detail on Radiosity preferences.
mental ray preferences The mental ray panel includes settings that determine how the mental ray rendering engine acts. Using this panel, you can enable mental ray extensions, cause brackets to be shown as the renderer progresses, and clear the frame before rendering. Additional settings are available for handling errors and logs.
Check out Chapter 46, “Raytracing and mental ray,” for more detail on the mental ray renderer.CrossReference
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Summary You can customize the Max interface in many ways. Most of these customization options are included under the Customize menu. In this chapter, you learned how to use this menu and its commands to customize many aspects of the interface. Customizing makes the Max interface more efficient and comfortable for you. Specifically, this chapter covered the following topics: ✦ Using the Customize User Interface dialog box to customize keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, quadmenus, menus, and colors ✦ Customizing buttons on the Modify and Utility panels ✦ Saving and loading custom interfaces ✦ Configuring paths ✦ Setting system units ✦ Setting preferences Part II, “Working with Objects,” is next. The first chapter covers the primitive objects and gets some objects into a scene for you to work with. ✦✦✦
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