Although Max consists of many different interface elements, such as panels, dialog boxes, and menus, the viewports are the main areas that will catch your attention. The four main viewports make up the bulk of the interface and are the one place where scene objects are visible. You can think of the viewports as looking at the television screen instead of the remote. Learning to control and use the viewports can make a huge difference in your comfort level with Max. The viewports are powerful and have numerous settings that you can use to provide thousands of different ways to look at your scene, and beginners can feel frustrated at not being able to control what they see. This chapter includes all the details you need to make the viewports reveal their secrets. Understanding 3D Space It seems silly to be talking about 3D space because we live and move in 3D space. If we stop and think about it, 3D space is natural to us. For example, consider a filing cabinet with four drawers. Within each drawer, you can stuff papers in the front, back, or sides, as well as in the drawers above or below. These positions represent three unique directions. When I ask my wife where our passports are (don’t ask why I’m looking for my passport) and she says, “They’re in the top drawer toward the back on the left side,” I know exactly where they are and can find them immediately (unless, of course, my kids have been in the cabinet). The concept of three dimensions is comfortable and familiar. Now consider the computer screen, which is inherently 2D. If I have many windows open, including a scanned image of my passport, and I ask my wife where the scanned image is, she would reply, “It’s somewhere behind the large window where you’re writing that book.” And I would look and search before locating it. In 2D space, I understand top and bottom and left and right and have a little notion of above and below.
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Understanding 3D space
Using the Viewport Navigation Control buttons
Controlling the viewport settings with the Viewport Configuration dialog box
Loading a viewport background image
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This conundrum is what 3D computer artists face—how do you represent 3D objects on a 2D device? The answer that 3ds max provides is to present several views, called viewports, of the scene. A viewport is a small window that displays the scene from one perspective. These viewports are the windows into Max’s 3D world. They are probably called viewports instead of windows because the word Windows has a different meaning in the computer world, and it is copyrighted. Each viewport has numerous settings and viewing options. Axonometric versus Perspective When it comes to views in the 3D world, two different types exist—Axonometric and Perspective. Axonometric views are common in the CAD world where the viewer is set at an infinite distance from the object such that all parallel lines remain parallel. A Perspective view simulates how our eyes actually work and converges all points to a single location off in the distance. You can see the difference between these two types of views clearly if you look at a long line of objects. For example, if you were to look down a long row of trees lining a road, the trees would eventually merge on the horizon. In Axonometric views, lines stay parallel as they recede off into the distance. Figure 2-1 shows this example with the Axonometric view on the left and the Perspective view on the right.
Figure 2-1: Axonometric and Perspective views
Orthographic and Isometric views If you dig a little deeper into Axonometric views, you find two different types—Orthographic and Isometric. Orthographic views are displayed from the perspective of looking straight down an axis at an object. This reveals a view in only one plane. Because orthographic viewports are constrained to one plane, they show the actual height and width of the object.
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Isometric views are not constrained to a single axis and can view the scene from any location, but all dimensions are still maintained. Learning viewports in Max Available orthographic viewports in Max include Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, and Right. Max starts up with the Top, Front, and Left orthographic viewports visible. The top-left corner of the viewport displays the viewport name. The fourth default viewport is a Perspective view. Figure 2-2 shows the viewports with Viewpoint model of a PT-328 U.S. Torpedo boat. You can see the model from a different direction in each viewport. If you want to measure the boat’s length from aft to stern, you could get an accurate measurement using the Top or Left viewport, whereas you can use the Front and Left viewports to measure its precise height. So, using these different viewports, you can accurately work with all object dimensions.
Figure 2-2: The Max interface includes four viewports, each with a different view.
Isometric views in Max are called User viewports. You can create a User viewport by rotating any of the Orthographic views.
Max includes several keyboard shortcuts for quickly changing the view in the active viewport including T (Top View), B (Bottom View), F (Front View), L (Left View), C (Camera View), $ (Spotlight View), P (Perspective View), and U (Isometric User View). Pressing the V key opens a quadmenu that lets you select a new view.
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Using the Viewport Navigation Controls The standard viewports show you several different views of your current project, but within each viewport you can zoom in on certain objects, pan the view, or rotate about the center of the viewport. To zoom, pan, and rotate the default views, you need to use the Viewport Navigation Control buttons. These eight buttons are located at the bottom-right corner of the window. In Table 2-1, the keyboard shortcut for each button is listed in parentheses next to its name.
The active viewport is always marked with a yellow border.
Table 2-1: Viewport Navigation Controls
Toolbar Button Name Description
Zoom (Alt+Z or [ or ]) Moves closer to or farther from the objects in the active viewport by dragging the mouse or zooming by steps with the bracket keys. Zoom All Zooms in to or out of all the viewports simultaneously by dragging the mouse. Zoom Extents (Ctrl+Alt+Z), Zooms in on all objects or just the selected Zoom Extents Selected object until it fills the active viewport. Zoom Extents All (Ctrl+Shift+Z), Zooms in on all objects or just the Zoom Extents All Selected (Z) selected object until it fills all the viewports. Field of View, Region The Field of View button (only available in Zoom (Ctrl+W) the Perspective view) controls the width of the view. The Region Zoom button zooms in to the region selected by dragging the mouse. Pan (Ctrl+P or I), Walk Through Moves the view to the left, to the right, up, or down by dragging the mouse or by moving the mouse while holding down the I key. The Walk Through feature moves through the scene using the arrow keys or a mouse like a first-person video game. Arc Rotate (Ctrl+R), Arc Rotate Rotates the view around the global axis, Selected, Arc Rotate SubObject selected object, or subobject by dragging the mouse. Min/Max Toggle (Alt+W) Makes the active viewport fill the screen replacing the four separate viewports. Clicking this button a second time shows all four viewports again.
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When one of the Viewport Navigation buttons is selected, it is highlighted yellow. You cannot select, create, or transform objects while one of these buttons is highlighted. Right-clicking in the active viewpoint reverts to select object mode.
Zooming a view You can zoom in to and out of the scene in several ways. Clicking the Zoom (Alt+Z) button enters zoom mode where you can zoom in to and out of a viewport by dragging the mouse. This works in whichever viewport you drag in. To the right of the Zoom button is the Zoom All button, which does the same thing as the Zoom button, only to all four viewports at once. The Zoom Extents (Ctrl+Alt+Z) button zooms the active viewport so that all objects (or the selected objects with the Zoom Extents Selected button) are visible in the viewport. A Zoom Extents All (Ctrl+Shift+Z) button is available for zooming in all viewports to all objects’ extents; the most popular Zoom Extents All Selected (Z) is for zooming in to the extents of the selected objects in all viewports. You can use the brackets keys to zoom in ([) and out (]) by steps. Each key press zooms in (or out) another step. The Region Zoom (Ctrl+W) button lets you drag over the region that you want to zoom in on. If you select a non-orthogonal view, such as the Perspective view, the Region Zoom button has a flyout called the Field of View. Using this button, you can control how wide or narrow the view is. This is like using a wide angle or telephoto lens on your camera. This feature is different from zoom in that the perspective is distorted as the Field of View is increased.
Field of View is covered in more detail in Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras.”
Panning a view The Viewport Navigation Controls also offer two ways to pan in a viewport. In Pan mode (Ctrl+P), dragging in a viewport pans the view. Note that this doesn’t move the objects, only the view. The second way to pan is to hold down the I key while moving the mouse. This is known as an interactive pan. Walking through a view The Walk Through button, found as a flyout button under the Pan button, allows you to move through the scene in the Perspective or Camera viewport using the arrow keys or the mouse just as you would if you were playing a first-person computer game. When this button is active, the cursor changes to a small circle with an arrow inside it that points in the direction you are moving.
The Walk Through feature is new to 3ds max 7.
The Walk Through feature includes several keystrokes for controlling the camera’s movement. The arrow keys move the camera forward, left, back, and right (or you can use the W, A, S, and D keys). You can change the speed of the motion with the Q (accelerate) and Z (decelerate) keys or with the [ (decrease step size) and ] (increase step size) keys. The E and C keys (or the Shift+up or Shift+down arrows) are used to move up and down in the scene. The Shift+Spacebar key causes the camera to be set level. Dragging the mouse while the camera is moving changes the direction in which the camera points.
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Rotating a view Rotating the view can be the most revealing of all the view changes. When the Arc Rotate (Ctrl+R) button is selected, a rotation guide appears in the active viewport, as shown in Figure 2-3. This rotation guide is a circle with a square located at each quadrant. Clicking and dragging the left or right squares rotates the view side to side; the same action with the top and bottom squares rotates the view up and down. Clicking within the circle and dragging rotates within a single plane, and clicking and dragging outside of the circle rotates the view about the circle’s center either clockwise or counterclockwise. If you get confused, look at the cursor, which changes depending on the type of rotation. Figure 2-3 also shows a viewport that has been maximized using the Min/Max Toggle button.
If you rotate an orthogonal view, it automatically becomes a User view.
Figure 2-3: The rotation guide appears whenever the Arc Rotate button is selected.
Rotation guide
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Controlling viewports with a scroll wheel Now that I’ve explained the Viewport Navigation Control buttons and listed their keyboard shortcuts, I explain the easiest way to control the viewports—and clicking on the buttons isn’t it. Often, the quickest way to control the viewports is with the mouse. To really get the benefit of the mouse, you need to use a mouse with a scroll wheel (which also acts as a middle mouse button). Rolling the scroll wheel in the active viewport zooms in to and out of the viewport by steps just like the bracket keys ([ and ]). You can zoom precisely by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys while dragging the scroll wheel. Clicking and dragging the scroll wheel button pans the active viewport. Clicking and dragging with the Alt button held down rotates the active viewport. If the scroll wheel isn’t working, check the Viewports panel in the Preference Settings dialog box. You can select to use the scroll wheel control to pan and zoom in the viewports or to define and use Strokes.
Strokes are covered in Chapter 4, “Customizing the Max Interface and Setting Preferences.”
Controlling camera and spotlight views You can set any viewport to be a camera view (C) or a spotlight view ($) if a camera or a spotlight exists in the scene. When either of these views is active, the Viewport Navigation Control buttons change. In camera view, controls for dolly, roll, truck, pan, orbit, and field of view become active. A light view includes controls for falloff and hotspots.
Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras,” and Chapter 27, “Basic Lighting Techniques,” cover these changes in more detail.
Tutorial: Navigating the active viewport Over time, working with the Viewport Navigation Controls becomes second nature to you, but you need to practice to get to that point. In this tutorial, you get a chance to take the viewports for a spin—literally. To practice navigating a viewport, follow these steps: 1. Open the Bruce the dog.max file from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. This file includes a model of a dog (affectionately named Bruce) created by Viewpoint. It provides a reference as we navigate the viewport. The active viewport is the Perspective viewport. 2. Click the Min/Max Toggle button (or press Alt+W) to make the Perspective viewport fill the space of all four viewports. 3. Click the Pan button (or press Ctrl+P), and drag the window until Bruce’s head is centered in the viewport. Then click the Zoom button (or press Alt+Z), and drag in the Perspective viewport until Bruce’s head fills the viewport, as shown in Figure 2-4.
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Figure 2-4: The Perspective viewport zoomed in on the dog’s head using the Zoom and Pan controls
4. Choose Views➪Save Active Perspective View to save the current view of the dog’s head. 5. Click the Zoom Extents button (or press Ctrl+Alt+Z) to size the entire dog body in the current viewport. 6. Click the Arc Rotate button (or press Ctrl+R), and drag from the left square on the rotation guide to the right. This rotates Bruce to make his front side more visible, as shown in Figure 2-5. Good boy, Bruce. If you tried this tutorial as outlined, try it again using the mouse’s scroll wheel.
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Figure 2-5: The Perspective viewport after a slight rotation shows Bruce’s good side.
Using the Views Menu The Views menu includes several commands for controlling the viewports including commands to undo the latest viewport changes. Undoing and saving changes made with the Viewport Navigation Controls If you get lost in your view, you can undo and redo viewport changes with Views➪Undo View Change (Shift+Z) and Views➪Redo View Change (Shift+Y). These commands are different from the Edit➪Undo and Edit➪Redo commands, which can undo or redo geometry changes. You can save changes made to a viewport by using the Views➪Save Active Viewport menu command. This command saves the Viewport Navigation settings for recall. To restore these settings, use Views➪Restore Active Viewport.
The Save and Restore Active Viewport commands do not save any viewport configuration settings, just the navigated view. Saving an active view uses a buffer, so it remembers only one view for each viewport.
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Viewing grids Grids are helpful in establishing your bearings in 3D space. For the active viewport, the G key turns the grids on and off. The Views➪Grids command opens a submenu with the following options: Show Home Grid, Activate Home Grid, Activate Grid Object, and Align Grid to View.
Chapter 7, “Transforming Objects—Translate, Rotate, and Scale,” covers grids in more detail.
Displaying various viewport items Next on the Views menu are several commands that control what is displayed in the viewport. If a command is enabled, a check mark appears to the left of the command. The Show Transform Gizmo command displays axes and special handles to move, rotate, and scale the object in different directions. The Show Ghosting command displays the position of the selected object in the previous several frames, the next several frames, or both. The Show Key Times command displays frame numbers along the trajectory path where every animation key is located. The Shade Selected command turns on shading for the selected object in all viewports, and the Show Dependencies command shows any objects that are linked or instanced from a parent object. The Create Camera from View command (Ctrl+C) creates a camera and positions it to match the current view. The Add Default Lights to Scene command converts the default lights to actual light objects in the scene. This feature lets you start with the default lights and modify them as needed.
The keyboard shortcut for the Create Camera from View command is Ctrl+C, which is the same as the commonly used Copy command in most other Windows programs. The concepts of Cut, Copy, and Paste don’t really work in Max, and you might find yourself using this keyboard shortcut by accident occasionally. If you find that you’ve used this command incorrectly, you can use the Undo View Change (Shift+Z) to undo the change.
Disabling and refreshing viewports If your scene gets too complicated, you can experience some slow-down waiting for each viewport to be updated with changes, but fear not because several options will come to your rescue. The first option to try is to disable a viewport. You can disable a viewport by right-clicking on the viewport’s name and selecting the Disable View menu command from the pop-up menu, or you can press the keyboard shortcut, D. When a disabled viewport is active, it is updated as normal; when it is inactive, the viewport is not updated at all until it becomes active again. Disabled viewports are identified by the word “Disabled,” which appears next to the viewport’s name in the upper-left corner. Another trick to increase the viewport update speed is to disable the View➪Update During Spinner Drag menu option. Changing parameter spinners can cause a slowdown by requiring every viewport to update as the spinner changes. If the spinner is changing rapidly, it can really slow even a powerful system. Disabling this option causes the viewport to wait for the spinner to stop changing before updating. Sometimes when changes are made, the viewports aren’t completely refreshed. This typically happens when dialog boxes from other programs are moved in front of the viewports. If this happens, you can force Max to refresh all the viewports with the Views➪Redraw All Views (keyboard shortcut, `) menu command.
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The Redraw All Views (keyboard shortcut, `) command refreshes each viewport and makes everything visible again. (As objects get moved around, they often mask one another and lines disappear.) Activate All Maps turns on all maps, and Deactivate All Maps turns off all maps. Material maps can take up lots of memory and can slow the viewport rendering. The Adaptive Degradation Toggle (O) is an option that enables the animation to degrade the image resolution (by downgrading the rendering method) in order to maintain a consistent frame rate. This can help when you’re trying to perfect the timing of an animation sequence and you don’t need the prettiest-looking images in the viewports. The Object Display Culling (Alt+O) can increase viewport display performance by drawing only those objects closest to the camera and ignoring all objects that are hidden behind other objects. Maximizing the active viewport Sooner or later, the viewports will feel too small. When this happens, you have several ways to increase the size of your viewports. The first trick to try is to change the viewport sizes by clicking and dragging any of the viewport borders. Dragging on the intersection of the viewports resizes all the viewports. Figure 2-6 shows the viewports after being dynamically resized.
You can return to the original layout by right-clicking on any of the viewport borders and selecting Reset Layout from the pop-up menu.
The second trick to try is to use the Min/Max Toggle (Alt+W) to expand the active viewport to fill the space reserved for all four viewports, as shown previously in Figure 2-3. Clicking the Min/Max Toggle (or pressing Alt+W) a second time returns to the defined layout.
Figure 2-6: You can dynamically resize viewports by dragging their borders.
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Maximizing the viewport helps temporarily, but you can take another step before convincing your boss that you need a larger monitor. You can enter Expert Mode by choosing Views➪ Expert Mode (Ctrl+X). It maximizes the viewport space by removing the toolbars, the Command Panel, and most of the Lower Interface Bar. With most of the interface elements gone, you’ll need to rely on the menus, keyboard shortcuts, and quadmenus to execute commands. To re-enable the default interface, click the Cancel Expert Mode button in the lower right of the Max window (or press Ctrl+X again). Figure 2-7 shows the interface in Expert Mode.
Figure 2-7: Expert Mode maximizes the viewports by eliminating most of the interface elements.
Configuring the Viewports If the Viewport Navigation Controls help define what you see, then the Viewport Configuration dialog box helps define how you see objects in the viewports. You can configure each viewport using this dialog box. To open this dialog box, choose the Customize➪Viewport Configuration menu command. You can also open this dialog box by right-clicking the viewport’s name located in the upper-left corner of each viewport and choosing Configure from the pop-up menu. The pop-up menu itself includes many of the settings found in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, but the dialog box lets you alter several settings at once. You can also make this dialog box appear for the active viewport by right-clicking any of the Viewport Navigation Control buttons in the lower-right corner. The Viewport Configuration dialog box contains several panels, including Rendering Method, Layout, Safe Frames, Adaptive Degradation, and Regions. The Preference Settings dialog box also includes many settings for controlling the behavior and look of the viewports.
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See Chapter 4, “Customizing the Max Interface and Setting Preferences,” for more on the Preference Settings dialog box and all its options.
Setting the viewport rendering method Complex scenes take longer to display and render. The renderer used for the viewports is highly optimized to be very quick, but if you’re working on a huge model with lots of complex textures and every viewport is set to display the highest quality view, then updating each viewport can slow the program to a crawl. The Viewport Configuration dialog box’s Rendering Method panel, shown in Figure 2-8, lets you set the rendering settings for the Active Viewport, All Viewports, or All but Active viewport.
If you ever get stuck waiting for Max to complete a task, such as redrawing the viewports, you can always press the Escape key to suspend any task immediately and return control to the interface.
Figure 2-8: The Rendering Method panel holds controls for specifying the Rendering Level and several other rendering options.
These settings have no effect on the final rendering specified using the Rendering menu. They affect only the display in the viewport.
Rendering levels The Rendering Level options, from slowest to fastest, include the following: ✦ Smooth+Highlights: Shows smooth surfaces with lighting highlights. This rendering type is the slowest. ✦ Smooth: Shows smooth surfaces without any lighting effects. ✦ Facets+Highlights: Shows individual polygon faces and lighting highlights.
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✦ Facets: Shows individual polygon faces without any lighting effects. ✦ Flat: Shows the entire object using a single color. ✦ Lit Wireframes: Shows polygon edges with lighting effects. ✦ Wireframe: Shows polygon edges only. ✦ Bounding Box: Shows a box that would enclose the object. This rendering type is the quickest.
Although it really isn’t a rendering method, the Edged Faces option shows the edges for each face when a shaded rendering method is selected. You can enable and disable this option with the F4 keyboard shortcut.
Figure 2-9 shows, side by side, all the various viewport rendering methods applied to a simple sphere.
Figure 2-9: The viewport rendering methods are shown from left to right. First Row: Smooth+Highlights, Smooth, Facets+Highlights, Facets. Second Row: Lit Wireframes, Wireframe, Bounding Box, and Edged Faces applied to Smooth+Highlights.
The most common rendering setting is Wireframe. It gives a good representation of the object while redrawing very quickly. Faceted rendering displays every face as a flat plane, but it shows the object as a solid model and is good for checking whether objects overlap. The Smooth rendering level shows a rough approximation of the final rendering. Setting the rendering level to include highlights shows the effect of the lights in the scene.
Many effects, such as bump maps, transparent maps, and shadows, cannot be seen in the viewport and show up only in the final render.
Viewing transparency In addition to these shading types, you can set the viewport to display objects that contain transparency (which is set in the Object Properties dialog box). The three Transparency options are None, which doesn’t display any transparency; Simple, which cross-hatches the transparent object; and Best, which includes a transparency effect for a smooth look. Figure 2-10 shows these three transparency options with the help of a hungry little animated creature and his ghostly rival.
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Figure 2-10: The viewport transparency options include None, Simple, and Best.
Rendering options The Rendering Options section within the Rendering Method panel includes several other options, such as Disable View (D) and Disable Textures. These options can help speed up viewport updates or increase the visual detail of the objects in the viewport.
At any time during a viewport update, you can click the mouse or press a key to cancel the redraw. Max doesn’t make you wait for a screen redraw to be able to execute commands with the mouse or keyboard shortcuts.
Disable Textures turns off texture rendering for quick viewport updates. The Texture Correction option speeds rendering updates by interpolating the current texture rather than re-rendering. Texture Correction (along with Disable View) is one of the options available in the pop-up menu by right-clicking the viewport name. A Z-Buffer is used to keep track of each object’s distance from the camera. Enabling Z-Buffer Wireframe Objects causes the wireframe objects to be drawn from back to front. If your wireframe lines seem to be disappearing, it could be that the viewport is drawing the lines in whatever order and some lines that should appear in the back are being drawn on top of the ones in the front. Enabling this option helps prevent that. Force 2-Sided makes both sides of all faces visible. For example, suppose you have a sphere with a hole in it. This setting enables you to see the interior surface of the sphere through the hole. Figure 2-11 shows a sphere with a star-shape cutout of its surface. The left image has the Force 2-Sided option disabled, and the image on the right has it enabled.
Figure 2-11: The Force 2-Sided option makes the interior of objects visible.
The Default Lighting toggle deactivates your current lights and uses the default lights. This option can be helpful when you’re trying to view objects in a dark setting because the default lighting illuminates the entire scene without requiring you to remove or turn off lights. You
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can also specify whether default lighting uses one light or two. The one-light option creates a single light positioned behind the viewer and at an angle to the scene. Scenes with one light update quicker than scenes with two lights. Making selected objects visible You use Shade Selected Faces (F2) to shade selected subobject faces in red, making them easy to see.
The Shade Selected Faces (F2) option, which shades selected subobject faces, is different from the Views➪Shade Selected menu command, which turns on shading for the selected object in all viewports.
The Use Selection Brackets option displays white corners around the current selection. Selection brackets are useful for helping you see the entire size of a grouped object but can be annoying if left on with many objects selected. Uncheck this option (or press the J key) to make these brackets disappear. The option to Display Selected with Edged Faces helps to highlight the selected object. If this option is enabled, then the edges of the current selection are displayed regardless of whether the Edged Faces check box is enabled. Figure 2-12 shows a futuristic character with his upper legs selected with the Display Selected with Edged Faces option and the Use Selection Brackets options enabled. These options make the current selection easy to see.
Figure 2-12: The Display Selected with Edged Faces and Use Selection Brackets options make identifying the current selection easy.
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Using clipping planes Clipping planes define an invisible barrier beyond which all objects are invisible. For example, if you have a scene with many detailed mountain objects in the background, working with an object in the front of the scene can be difficult. By setting the clipping plane between the two, you can work on the front objects without having to redraw the mountain objects every time you update the scene. This affects only the viewport, not the rendered output. Enabling the Viewport Clipping option places a yellow line with two arrows on the right side of the viewport, as shown in Figure 2-13. The top arrow represents the back clipping plane, and the bottom arrow is the front clipping plane. Drag the arrows to set the clipping planes. You can quickly turn Viewport Clipping on or off by right-clicking the viewport name and choosing Viewport Clipping from the pop-up menu. Enabling Fast View The Fast View option speeds viewport updates by drawing only a limited number of faces. The spinner value determines how often faces are drawn. For example, a setting of 5 would draw only every fifth face. This option renders viewport updates much quicker and gives you an idea of the objects without displaying the entire object.
Figure 2-13: The clipping planes can be used to show the interior of this car model. Clipping Plane markers
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Tutorial: Viewing the interior of a heart with Clipping Planes You can use the Clipping Planes setting in the Viewport Configuration dialog box to view the interior of a model such as a heart. To view the interior of a heart model, follow these steps: 1. Open the Heart interior.max file from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. This file has an anatomical heart model created by Viewpoint. 2. Choose Customize➪Viewport Configuration to open the Viewport Configuration dialog box. Enable the Viewport Clipping option and the Force 2-Sided option, and then close the dialog box. 3. The Clipping Plane markers appear to the right of the viewport. The top marker controls the back clipping plane, and the bottom marker controls the front clipping plane. Drag the bottom clipping plane marker upward to slice through the heart model to reveal its interior as shown in Figure 2-14. Figure 2-14 shows the interior of the heart model.
Figure 2-14: By using Clipping Planes, you can reveal the interior of a model.
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Setting the Field of View You can also alter the Field of View (FOV) for the Perspective view in the Viewport Configuration dialog box. To create a fish-eye view, increase the FOV setting to 10 or more. The maximum FOV value is 180, and the default value is 45. You can also change the Field of View using the Field of View button in the Viewport Navigation Controls. The Viewport Configuration dialog box, however, lets you enter precise values.
See Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras,” for more coverage on Field of View.
Grabbing a viewport image It’s not rendering, but you can grab an image of the active viewport using the Tools➪Grab Viewport. Before grabbing the image, a simple dialog box appears asking you to add a label to the grabbed image. The image is loaded into the Rendered Frame Window, and its label appears in the lower-right corner of the image, as shown in Figure 2-15.
Figure 2-15: A viewport image can be grabbed using a menu command found in the Tools menu.
Altering the Viewport layout Now that you’ve started to figure out the viewports, you may want to change the number and size of viewports displayed. The Layout panel, shown in Figure 2-16, in the Viewpoint Configuration dialog box offers several layouts as alternatives to the default layout (not that there is anything wrong with the default and its four equally sized viewports). After selecting a layout from the options at the top of the panel, you can assign each individual viewport a different view by clicking the viewport and choosing a view from the pop-up menu. The view options include Perspective, User, Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, ActiveShade, Schematic, Grid (Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Display Planes), Extended (Asset Browser, Motion Mixer, Biped Animation WorkBench, MAXScript Listener, HW Standard Material), and Shape. Views can also be set to Camera and Spotlight if they exist in the scene. Each camera and light that exists is listed by name at the top of the pop-up menu.
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Figure 2-16: The Layout panel offers many layout options.
Using Safe Frames Completing an animation and converting it to some broadcast medium, only to see that the whole left side of the animation is being cut off in the final screening, can be discouraging. If you rely on the size of the active viewport to show the edges of the final output, you could be way off. Using the Safe Frames feature, you can display some guides within the viewport that show where these clipping edges are. The Safe Frames panel of the Viewport Configuration dialog box lets you define several safe frame options, as shown in Figure 2-17, including the following: ✦ Live Area: Marks the area that will be rendered, shown as yellow lines. If a background image is added to the viewport and the Match Rendering Output option is selected, then the background image will fit within the Live Area. ✦ Action Safe: The area ensured to be visible in the final rendered file, marked with light blue lines; objects outside this area will be at the edge of the monitor and could be distorted. ✦ Title Safe: The area where the title can safely appear without distortion or bleeding, marked with orange lines. ✦ User Safe: The output area defined by the user, marked with magenta lines. ✦ 12-Field Grid: Displays a grid in the viewport, marked with a pink grid. For each type of safe frame, you can set the percent reduction by entering values in the Horizontal, Vertical, or Both fields. The 12-Field Grid option offers 4 ×3 and 12 ×9 aspect ratios. The Show Safe Frames in Active View option displays the Safe Frame borders in the active viewport. You can quickly enable or disable Safe Frames by right-clicking the viewport name and choosing Show Safe Frame in the pop-up menu (or you can use the Shift+F keyboard shortcut). Figure 2-18 shows an elongated Perspective viewport with all the safe frame guides enabled. The Safe Frames show that the top and bottom of my dinosaur will be cut off when rendered.
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Figure 2-17: The Safe Frames panel lets you specify areas to render.
Figure 2-18: Safe frames provide guides that help you see when the scene objects are out of bounds.
Live Area lines Action Safe lines Title Safe lines User Safe lines
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Understanding Adaptive Degradation When you are previewing a complex animation sequence in a viewport, slow updates can affect the timing of the animation. This can make proofing your work difficult and would require many additional, fully rendered tasks. The feature in Max that addresses this issue is called Adaptive Degradation, and although it sounds like a weapon that some alien might use to disarm you, it enables you to force a viewport to display at a pre-specified number of frames per second. If the display update takes too long to maintain this rate, then it automatically degrades the rendering level in order to maintain the frame rate. This option is very helpful because when you’re testing an animation, you are not as concerned about the model details or textures. The Adaptive Degradation panel is available in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, as shown in Figure 2-19.
Figure 2-19: The Adaptive Degradation panel maintains a defined frame rate by degrading the rendering level.
You can enable Adaptive Degradation by using the Views➪Adaptive Degradation menu command (or by pressing the O key). Adaptive Degradation, when enabled, is used only for animation sequences where the objects are updated within the viewport quickly. If the animation isn’t progressing, then enabling and disabling Adaptive Degradation has no effect.
You learn to animate objects in Chapter 29, “Animation and Keyframe Basics.”
In the Maintain FPS box in the Degrade Parameters section, you enter the frame rate that you want to maintain. The General Degradation selection specifies the render level used by all inactive viewports; the Active Degradation selection is used by the active viewport. You can select several rendering levels in each section.
Another way to speed the frame rate in the active viewport is to disable (D) the inactive viewports.
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The Reset on Mouse Up option forces Max to render at the specified rendering levels when the mouse is released. The Show Rebuild Cursor option makes the cursor visible as the viewports are rendered. The Update Time is the amount of time between rendering updates. At a setting of 0, each frame must be completely rendered before the next frame is attempted. The Interrupt Time value is how long Max waits before checking to see whether the mouse has moved. Defining regions The Regions panel, the final panel in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, enables you to define regions and focus your rendering energies on a smaller area. Complex scenes can take considerable time and machine power to render. Sometimes, you want to test render only a portion of a viewport to check material assignment, texture map placement, or lighting. You can define the size of the various Regions in the Regions panel of the Viewport Configuration dialog box, shown in Figure 2-20.
Figure 2-20: The Regions panel enables you to work with smaller regions within your scene.
After you’ve specified a Blowup Region or a Sub Region, you can select to render using these regions by selecting Region or Blowup from the Render Type drop-down list on the far-right end of the main toolbar and clicking the Quick Render button. After clicking the Quick Render button, the specified region is displayed as an outline in the viewport and an OK button appears in the lower-right corner of the viewport. You can move this outline to reposition it or drag its edge or corner handles to resize the region. The new position and dimension values are updated in the Regions panel for next time. Click the OK button to begin the rendering process. The difference between these two regions is that the Sub Region displays the Rendered Frame Window in black, except for the specified sub-region. The Blowup Region fills the entire Rendered Frame Window, as shown in Figure 2-21.
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You can learn more about Render Types and the Rendered Frame Window in Chapter 43, “Rendering Basics.”
Figure 2-21: The image on the left was rendered using the Sub Region option; the right image used the Blowup Region.
The Virtual Viewport is a feature that lets you zoom in and pan within the viewport image using the numeric keypad. This feature is available only if you are using the OpenGL display driver. You can check to see which display driver you are using by selecting Help➪About 3ds max. This command opens a credits screen that lists the current driver. You can change the current display driver in the Viewport panel of the Preference Settings dialog box. If you have OpenGL set as the current display driver, then you can select Use Virtual Viewport to display the viewport in the area to the right. Using the Zoom, X, and Y Offset values, you can specify where the virtual viewport looks or you can drag the rectangular outline in the visible screen to the right. Once the Virtual Viewport feature is enabled, you can use the divide key (/) on the numeric keypad to turn the virtual viewport on and off. Use the plus (+) and minus (-) numeric keypad keys to zoom in and out, and use the 2, 4, 6, and 8 keys on the numeric keypad to pan within the virtual viewport.
The Virtual Viewport feature is available only if you are using the OpenGL driver. If you’ve specified either the Software Z-Buffer or the Direct X driver, then this option isn’t available.
Working with Viewport Backgrounds Remember in grade school when you realized that you could immediately draw really well using tracing paper (where all you needed to do was follow the lines)? Well, it’s not quite tracing paper, but you can load background images into a viewport that can help as you create and position your objects. Loading viewport background images The Views➪Viewport Background menu command (Alt+B) opens a dialog box, shown in Figure 2-22, in which you can select an image or animation to appear behind a viewport. The displayed background image is helpful for aligning objects in a scene, but it is for display purposes only and will not be rendered. To create a background image to be rendered, you need to specify the background in the Environment dialog box, opened using the Rendering➪ Environment (keyboard shortcut, 8) menu command.
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Figure 2-22: The Viewport Background dialog box lets you select a background source image or animation.
If the background image changes, you can update the viewport using the Views➪Update Background Image menu command (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+B). This is helpful if you have the background image opened in Photoshop at the same time. You can update the background image, save it, and then immediately update the image in Max. The Views➪Reset Background Transform menu command automatically rescales and recenters the background image to fit the viewport. You should use this if you’ve changed the viewport size or changed the background’s size. Each viewport can have a different background image. To load and configure a viewport background image, choose Views➪Viewport Background (or press the Alt+B keyboard shortcut). This opens the Viewport Background dialog box, shown previously. The Files button opens the Select Background Image dialog box, where you can select the image to load. The Devices button lets you obtain a background from a device such as a Video Recorder. If an environment map is already loaded into the Environment dialog box, you can simply click the Use Environment Background option. Keep in mind that the background image will not be rendered unless it is made into an Environment map.
I cover environment maps in Chapter 43, “Rendering Basics.”
Loading viewport background animations The Animation Synchronization section of the Viewport Background dialog box lets you set which frames of a background animation sequence are displayed. The Use Frame and To values determine which frames of the loaded animation are used. The Step value trims the number of frames that are to be used by selecting every Nth frame. For example, a Step value of 4 would use every fourth frame.
Loading an animation sequence as a viewport background can really help as you begin to animate complex motions, like a running horse. By stepping through the frames of the animation, you can line up your model with the background image for realistic animations.
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The Start At value is the frame in the current scene where this background animation would first appear. The Sync Start to Frame value is the frame of the background animation that should appear first. The Start and End Processing options let you determine what appears before the Start and End frames. Options include displaying a blank, holding the current frame, and looping. If you select an animation as the background, make sure that the Animate Background option is selected. Also note that the viewport background is not visible if the Display Background option is not selected. The Aspect Ratio section offers options for setting the size of the background image. You can select to Match Viewport, Match Bitmap, or Match Rendering Output. The Lock Zoom/Pan option is available if either the Match Bitmap option or the Match Rendering Output option is selected. This option locks the background image to the geometry so that when the objects in the scene are zoomed or panned, the background image follows. If the background gets out of line, you can reset its position with the Views➪Reset Background Transform command.
When the Lock Zoom/Pan option is selected, the background image is resized when you zoom in on an object. Resizing the background image fills the virtual memory, and if you zoom in too far, the background image could exceed your virtual memory. If this happens, a dialog box appears to inform you of the problem and gives you the option of not displaying the background image.
You can set the Apply Source and Display to option to display the background in All Views or in the Active Only. Tutorial: Loading reference images for modeling When modeling a physical object, you can get a jump on the project by taking pictures with a digital camera of the front, top, and left views of the object and then load them as background images in the respective viewports. The background images can then be a reference for your work. This is especially helpful with models that need to be precise. You can even work from CAD drawings. To load the background images of a brass swan, follow these steps: 1. Choose File➪New (or press Ctrl+N) to open a blank scene file. 2. Right-click on the Front viewport to make it the active viewport, and choose Views➪ Viewport Background (or press Alt+B). The Viewport Background dialog box opens. 3. Click on the Files button, and in the File dialog box that opens, select the Brass swanfront view.jpg image from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. 4. Select the Match Bitmap, Display Background, Lock Zoom/Pan, and Active Only options, and click OK to close the dialog box. The image now appears in the background of the Front viewport. 5. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 for the Top and Left viewports. Figure 2-23 shows the Max interface with background images loaded in the Front, Top, and Left viewports.
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Figure 2-23: Adding a background image to a viewport can help as you begin to model objects.
Summary Viewports are the window into the Max world. Remember that if you can’t see it, you can’t work with it, so you need to learn to use the viewports. You can also configure viewports to display just the way you desire. This chapter covered the following topics: ✦ 3D space and the various viewport types ✦ The various Viewport Navigation Control buttons ✦ The Rendering Level and Display options in the Viewport Configuration dialog box ✦ The other panels of the Viewport Configuration dialog box that allow you to change the layout, safe frames, and regions ✦ How to use Adaptive Degradation to maintain a constant frame rate for viewport animation sequences ✦ A viewport background image In the next chapter, you find out all the details about working with files, including loading, saving, and merging scene files. You also learn about External References (XRefs) and how to use them to manage scene creation in a workgroup. The next chapter also covers import and export options for interfacing with other software packages. ✦✦✦
2 2 CHAPTER
✦✦✦✦
In This Chapter
Understanding 3D space
Using the Viewport Navigation Control buttons
Controlling the viewport settings with the Viewport Configuration dialog box
Loading a viewport background image
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This conundrum is what 3D computer artists face—how do you represent 3D objects on a 2D device? The answer that 3ds max provides is to present several views, called viewports, of the scene. A viewport is a small window that displays the scene from one perspective. These viewports are the windows into Max’s 3D world. They are probably called viewports instead of windows because the word Windows has a different meaning in the computer world, and it is copyrighted. Each viewport has numerous settings and viewing options. Axonometric versus Perspective When it comes to views in the 3D world, two different types exist—Axonometric and Perspective. Axonometric views are common in the CAD world where the viewer is set at an infinite distance from the object such that all parallel lines remain parallel. A Perspective view simulates how our eyes actually work and converges all points to a single location off in the distance. You can see the difference between these two types of views clearly if you look at a long line of objects. For example, if you were to look down a long row of trees lining a road, the trees would eventually merge on the horizon. In Axonometric views, lines stay parallel as they recede off into the distance. Figure 2-1 shows this example with the Axonometric view on the left and the Perspective view on the right.
Figure 2-1: Axonometric and Perspective views
Orthographic and Isometric views If you dig a little deeper into Axonometric views, you find two different types—Orthographic and Isometric. Orthographic views are displayed from the perspective of looking straight down an axis at an object. This reveals a view in only one plane. Because orthographic viewports are constrained to one plane, they show the actual height and width of the object.
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Isometric views are not constrained to a single axis and can view the scene from any location, but all dimensions are still maintained. Learning viewports in Max Available orthographic viewports in Max include Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, and Right. Max starts up with the Top, Front, and Left orthographic viewports visible. The top-left corner of the viewport displays the viewport name. The fourth default viewport is a Perspective view. Figure 2-2 shows the viewports with Viewpoint model of a PT-328 U.S. Torpedo boat. You can see the model from a different direction in each viewport. If you want to measure the boat’s length from aft to stern, you could get an accurate measurement using the Top or Left viewport, whereas you can use the Front and Left viewports to measure its precise height. So, using these different viewports, you can accurately work with all object dimensions.
Figure 2-2: The Max interface includes four viewports, each with a different view.
Isometric views in Max are called User viewports. You can create a User viewport by rotating any of the Orthographic views.
Max includes several keyboard shortcuts for quickly changing the view in the active viewport including T (Top View), B (Bottom View), F (Front View), L (Left View), C (Camera View), $ (Spotlight View), P (Perspective View), and U (Isometric User View). Pressing the V key opens a quadmenu that lets you select a new view.
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Using the Viewport Navigation Controls The standard viewports show you several different views of your current project, but within each viewport you can zoom in on certain objects, pan the view, or rotate about the center of the viewport. To zoom, pan, and rotate the default views, you need to use the Viewport Navigation Control buttons. These eight buttons are located at the bottom-right corner of the window. In Table 2-1, the keyboard shortcut for each button is listed in parentheses next to its name.
The active viewport is always marked with a yellow border.
Table 2-1: Viewport Navigation Controls
Toolbar Button Name Description
Zoom (Alt+Z or [ or ]) Moves closer to or farther from the objects in the active viewport by dragging the mouse or zooming by steps with the bracket keys. Zoom All Zooms in to or out of all the viewports simultaneously by dragging the mouse. Zoom Extents (Ctrl+Alt+Z), Zooms in on all objects or just the selected Zoom Extents Selected object until it fills the active viewport. Zoom Extents All (Ctrl+Shift+Z), Zooms in on all objects or just the Zoom Extents All Selected (Z) selected object until it fills all the viewports. Field of View, Region The Field of View button (only available in Zoom (Ctrl+W) the Perspective view) controls the width of the view. The Region Zoom button zooms in to the region selected by dragging the mouse. Pan (Ctrl+P or I), Walk Through Moves the view to the left, to the right, up, or down by dragging the mouse or by moving the mouse while holding down the I key. The Walk Through feature moves through the scene using the arrow keys or a mouse like a first-person video game. Arc Rotate (Ctrl+R), Arc Rotate Rotates the view around the global axis, Selected, Arc Rotate SubObject selected object, or subobject by dragging the mouse. Min/Max Toggle (Alt+W) Makes the active viewport fill the screen replacing the four separate viewports. Clicking this button a second time shows all four viewports again.
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When one of the Viewport Navigation buttons is selected, it is highlighted yellow. You cannot select, create, or transform objects while one of these buttons is highlighted. Right-clicking in the active viewpoint reverts to select object mode.
Zooming a view You can zoom in to and out of the scene in several ways. Clicking the Zoom (Alt+Z) button enters zoom mode where you can zoom in to and out of a viewport by dragging the mouse. This works in whichever viewport you drag in. To the right of the Zoom button is the Zoom All button, which does the same thing as the Zoom button, only to all four viewports at once. The Zoom Extents (Ctrl+Alt+Z) button zooms the active viewport so that all objects (or the selected objects with the Zoom Extents Selected button) are visible in the viewport. A Zoom Extents All (Ctrl+Shift+Z) button is available for zooming in all viewports to all objects’ extents; the most popular Zoom Extents All Selected (Z) is for zooming in to the extents of the selected objects in all viewports. You can use the brackets keys to zoom in ([) and out (]) by steps. Each key press zooms in (or out) another step. The Region Zoom (Ctrl+W) button lets you drag over the region that you want to zoom in on. If you select a non-orthogonal view, such as the Perspective view, the Region Zoom button has a flyout called the Field of View. Using this button, you can control how wide or narrow the view is. This is like using a wide angle or telephoto lens on your camera. This feature is different from zoom in that the perspective is distorted as the Field of View is increased.
Field of View is covered in more detail in Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras.”
Panning a view The Viewport Navigation Controls also offer two ways to pan in a viewport. In Pan mode (Ctrl+P), dragging in a viewport pans the view. Note that this doesn’t move the objects, only the view. The second way to pan is to hold down the I key while moving the mouse. This is known as an interactive pan. Walking through a view The Walk Through button, found as a flyout button under the Pan button, allows you to move through the scene in the Perspective or Camera viewport using the arrow keys or the mouse just as you would if you were playing a first-person computer game. When this button is active, the cursor changes to a small circle with an arrow inside it that points in the direction you are moving.
The Walk Through feature is new to 3ds max 7.
The Walk Through feature includes several keystrokes for controlling the camera’s movement. The arrow keys move the camera forward, left, back, and right (or you can use the W, A, S, and D keys). You can change the speed of the motion with the Q (accelerate) and Z (decelerate) keys or with the [ (decrease step size) and ] (increase step size) keys. The E and C keys (or the Shift+up or Shift+down arrows) are used to move up and down in the scene. The Shift+Spacebar key causes the camera to be set level. Dragging the mouse while the camera is moving changes the direction in which the camera points.
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Rotating a view Rotating the view can be the most revealing of all the view changes. When the Arc Rotate (Ctrl+R) button is selected, a rotation guide appears in the active viewport, as shown in Figure 2-3. This rotation guide is a circle with a square located at each quadrant. Clicking and dragging the left or right squares rotates the view side to side; the same action with the top and bottom squares rotates the view up and down. Clicking within the circle and dragging rotates within a single plane, and clicking and dragging outside of the circle rotates the view about the circle’s center either clockwise or counterclockwise. If you get confused, look at the cursor, which changes depending on the type of rotation. Figure 2-3 also shows a viewport that has been maximized using the Min/Max Toggle button.
If you rotate an orthogonal view, it automatically becomes a User view.
Figure 2-3: The rotation guide appears whenever the Arc Rotate button is selected.
Rotation guide
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Controlling viewports with a scroll wheel Now that I’ve explained the Viewport Navigation Control buttons and listed their keyboard shortcuts, I explain the easiest way to control the viewports—and clicking on the buttons isn’t it. Often, the quickest way to control the viewports is with the mouse. To really get the benefit of the mouse, you need to use a mouse with a scroll wheel (which also acts as a middle mouse button). Rolling the scroll wheel in the active viewport zooms in to and out of the viewport by steps just like the bracket keys ([ and ]). You can zoom precisely by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys while dragging the scroll wheel. Clicking and dragging the scroll wheel button pans the active viewport. Clicking and dragging with the Alt button held down rotates the active viewport. If the scroll wheel isn’t working, check the Viewports panel in the Preference Settings dialog box. You can select to use the scroll wheel control to pan and zoom in the viewports or to define and use Strokes.
Strokes are covered in Chapter 4, “Customizing the Max Interface and Setting Preferences.”
Controlling camera and spotlight views You can set any viewport to be a camera view (C) or a spotlight view ($) if a camera or a spotlight exists in the scene. When either of these views is active, the Viewport Navigation Control buttons change. In camera view, controls for dolly, roll, truck, pan, orbit, and field of view become active. A light view includes controls for falloff and hotspots.
Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras,” and Chapter 27, “Basic Lighting Techniques,” cover these changes in more detail.
Tutorial: Navigating the active viewport Over time, working with the Viewport Navigation Controls becomes second nature to you, but you need to practice to get to that point. In this tutorial, you get a chance to take the viewports for a spin—literally. To practice navigating a viewport, follow these steps: 1. Open the Bruce the dog.max file from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. This file includes a model of a dog (affectionately named Bruce) created by Viewpoint. It provides a reference as we navigate the viewport. The active viewport is the Perspective viewport. 2. Click the Min/Max Toggle button (or press Alt+W) to make the Perspective viewport fill the space of all four viewports. 3. Click the Pan button (or press Ctrl+P), and drag the window until Bruce’s head is centered in the viewport. Then click the Zoom button (or press Alt+Z), and drag in the Perspective viewport until Bruce’s head fills the viewport, as shown in Figure 2-4.
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Figure 2-4: The Perspective viewport zoomed in on the dog’s head using the Zoom and Pan controls
4. Choose Views➪Save Active Perspective View to save the current view of the dog’s head. 5. Click the Zoom Extents button (or press Ctrl+Alt+Z) to size the entire dog body in the current viewport. 6. Click the Arc Rotate button (or press Ctrl+R), and drag from the left square on the rotation guide to the right. This rotates Bruce to make his front side more visible, as shown in Figure 2-5. Good boy, Bruce. If you tried this tutorial as outlined, try it again using the mouse’s scroll wheel.
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Figure 2-5: The Perspective viewport after a slight rotation shows Bruce’s good side.
Using the Views Menu The Views menu includes several commands for controlling the viewports including commands to undo the latest viewport changes. Undoing and saving changes made with the Viewport Navigation Controls If you get lost in your view, you can undo and redo viewport changes with Views➪Undo View Change (Shift+Z) and Views➪Redo View Change (Shift+Y). These commands are different from the Edit➪Undo and Edit➪Redo commands, which can undo or redo geometry changes. You can save changes made to a viewport by using the Views➪Save Active Viewport menu command. This command saves the Viewport Navigation settings for recall. To restore these settings, use Views➪Restore Active Viewport.
The Save and Restore Active Viewport commands do not save any viewport configuration settings, just the navigated view. Saving an active view uses a buffer, so it remembers only one view for each viewport.
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Viewing grids Grids are helpful in establishing your bearings in 3D space. For the active viewport, the G key turns the grids on and off. The Views➪Grids command opens a submenu with the following options: Show Home Grid, Activate Home Grid, Activate Grid Object, and Align Grid to View.
Chapter 7, “Transforming Objects—Translate, Rotate, and Scale,” covers grids in more detail.
Displaying various viewport items Next on the Views menu are several commands that control what is displayed in the viewport. If a command is enabled, a check mark appears to the left of the command. The Show Transform Gizmo command displays axes and special handles to move, rotate, and scale the object in different directions. The Show Ghosting command displays the position of the selected object in the previous several frames, the next several frames, or both. The Show Key Times command displays frame numbers along the trajectory path where every animation key is located. The Shade Selected command turns on shading for the selected object in all viewports, and the Show Dependencies command shows any objects that are linked or instanced from a parent object. The Create Camera from View command (Ctrl+C) creates a camera and positions it to match the current view. The Add Default Lights to Scene command converts the default lights to actual light objects in the scene. This feature lets you start with the default lights and modify them as needed.
The keyboard shortcut for the Create Camera from View command is Ctrl+C, which is the same as the commonly used Copy command in most other Windows programs. The concepts of Cut, Copy, and Paste don’t really work in Max, and you might find yourself using this keyboard shortcut by accident occasionally. If you find that you’ve used this command incorrectly, you can use the Undo View Change (Shift+Z) to undo the change.
Disabling and refreshing viewports If your scene gets too complicated, you can experience some slow-down waiting for each viewport to be updated with changes, but fear not because several options will come to your rescue. The first option to try is to disable a viewport. You can disable a viewport by right-clicking on the viewport’s name and selecting the Disable View menu command from the pop-up menu, or you can press the keyboard shortcut, D. When a disabled viewport is active, it is updated as normal; when it is inactive, the viewport is not updated at all until it becomes active again. Disabled viewports are identified by the word “Disabled,” which appears next to the viewport’s name in the upper-left corner. Another trick to increase the viewport update speed is to disable the View➪Update During Spinner Drag menu option. Changing parameter spinners can cause a slowdown by requiring every viewport to update as the spinner changes. If the spinner is changing rapidly, it can really slow even a powerful system. Disabling this option causes the viewport to wait for the spinner to stop changing before updating. Sometimes when changes are made, the viewports aren’t completely refreshed. This typically happens when dialog boxes from other programs are moved in front of the viewports. If this happens, you can force Max to refresh all the viewports with the Views➪Redraw All Views (keyboard shortcut, `) menu command.
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The Redraw All Views (keyboard shortcut, `) command refreshes each viewport and makes everything visible again. (As objects get moved around, they often mask one another and lines disappear.) Activate All Maps turns on all maps, and Deactivate All Maps turns off all maps. Material maps can take up lots of memory and can slow the viewport rendering. The Adaptive Degradation Toggle (O) is an option that enables the animation to degrade the image resolution (by downgrading the rendering method) in order to maintain a consistent frame rate. This can help when you’re trying to perfect the timing of an animation sequence and you don’t need the prettiest-looking images in the viewports. The Object Display Culling (Alt+O) can increase viewport display performance by drawing only those objects closest to the camera and ignoring all objects that are hidden behind other objects. Maximizing the active viewport Sooner or later, the viewports will feel too small. When this happens, you have several ways to increase the size of your viewports. The first trick to try is to change the viewport sizes by clicking and dragging any of the viewport borders. Dragging on the intersection of the viewports resizes all the viewports. Figure 2-6 shows the viewports after being dynamically resized.
You can return to the original layout by right-clicking on any of the viewport borders and selecting Reset Layout from the pop-up menu.
The second trick to try is to use the Min/Max Toggle (Alt+W) to expand the active viewport to fill the space reserved for all four viewports, as shown previously in Figure 2-3. Clicking the Min/Max Toggle (or pressing Alt+W) a second time returns to the defined layout.
Figure 2-6: You can dynamically resize viewports by dragging their borders.
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Maximizing the viewport helps temporarily, but you can take another step before convincing your boss that you need a larger monitor. You can enter Expert Mode by choosing Views➪ Expert Mode (Ctrl+X). It maximizes the viewport space by removing the toolbars, the Command Panel, and most of the Lower Interface Bar. With most of the interface elements gone, you’ll need to rely on the menus, keyboard shortcuts, and quadmenus to execute commands. To re-enable the default interface, click the Cancel Expert Mode button in the lower right of the Max window (or press Ctrl+X again). Figure 2-7 shows the interface in Expert Mode.
Figure 2-7: Expert Mode maximizes the viewports by eliminating most of the interface elements.
Configuring the Viewports If the Viewport Navigation Controls help define what you see, then the Viewport Configuration dialog box helps define how you see objects in the viewports. You can configure each viewport using this dialog box. To open this dialog box, choose the Customize➪Viewport Configuration menu command. You can also open this dialog box by right-clicking the viewport’s name located in the upper-left corner of each viewport and choosing Configure from the pop-up menu. The pop-up menu itself includes many of the settings found in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, but the dialog box lets you alter several settings at once. You can also make this dialog box appear for the active viewport by right-clicking any of the Viewport Navigation Control buttons in the lower-right corner. The Viewport Configuration dialog box contains several panels, including Rendering Method, Layout, Safe Frames, Adaptive Degradation, and Regions. The Preference Settings dialog box also includes many settings for controlling the behavior and look of the viewports.
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See Chapter 4, “Customizing the Max Interface and Setting Preferences,” for more on the Preference Settings dialog box and all its options.
Setting the viewport rendering method Complex scenes take longer to display and render. The renderer used for the viewports is highly optimized to be very quick, but if you’re working on a huge model with lots of complex textures and every viewport is set to display the highest quality view, then updating each viewport can slow the program to a crawl. The Viewport Configuration dialog box’s Rendering Method panel, shown in Figure 2-8, lets you set the rendering settings for the Active Viewport, All Viewports, or All but Active viewport.
If you ever get stuck waiting for Max to complete a task, such as redrawing the viewports, you can always press the Escape key to suspend any task immediately and return control to the interface.
Figure 2-8: The Rendering Method panel holds controls for specifying the Rendering Level and several other rendering options.
These settings have no effect on the final rendering specified using the Rendering menu. They affect only the display in the viewport.
Rendering levels The Rendering Level options, from slowest to fastest, include the following: ✦ Smooth+Highlights: Shows smooth surfaces with lighting highlights. This rendering type is the slowest. ✦ Smooth: Shows smooth surfaces without any lighting effects. ✦ Facets+Highlights: Shows individual polygon faces and lighting highlights.
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✦ Facets: Shows individual polygon faces without any lighting effects. ✦ Flat: Shows the entire object using a single color. ✦ Lit Wireframes: Shows polygon edges with lighting effects. ✦ Wireframe: Shows polygon edges only. ✦ Bounding Box: Shows a box that would enclose the object. This rendering type is the quickest.
Although it really isn’t a rendering method, the Edged Faces option shows the edges for each face when a shaded rendering method is selected. You can enable and disable this option with the F4 keyboard shortcut.
Figure 2-9 shows, side by side, all the various viewport rendering methods applied to a simple sphere.
Figure 2-9: The viewport rendering methods are shown from left to right. First Row: Smooth+Highlights, Smooth, Facets+Highlights, Facets. Second Row: Lit Wireframes, Wireframe, Bounding Box, and Edged Faces applied to Smooth+Highlights.
The most common rendering setting is Wireframe. It gives a good representation of the object while redrawing very quickly. Faceted rendering displays every face as a flat plane, but it shows the object as a solid model and is good for checking whether objects overlap. The Smooth rendering level shows a rough approximation of the final rendering. Setting the rendering level to include highlights shows the effect of the lights in the scene.
Many effects, such as bump maps, transparent maps, and shadows, cannot be seen in the viewport and show up only in the final render.
Viewing transparency In addition to these shading types, you can set the viewport to display objects that contain transparency (which is set in the Object Properties dialog box). The three Transparency options are None, which doesn’t display any transparency; Simple, which cross-hatches the transparent object; and Best, which includes a transparency effect for a smooth look. Figure 2-10 shows these three transparency options with the help of a hungry little animated creature and his ghostly rival.
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Figure 2-10: The viewport transparency options include None, Simple, and Best.
Rendering options The Rendering Options section within the Rendering Method panel includes several other options, such as Disable View (D) and Disable Textures. These options can help speed up viewport updates or increase the visual detail of the objects in the viewport.
At any time during a viewport update, you can click the mouse or press a key to cancel the redraw. Max doesn’t make you wait for a screen redraw to be able to execute commands with the mouse or keyboard shortcuts.
Disable Textures turns off texture rendering for quick viewport updates. The Texture Correction option speeds rendering updates by interpolating the current texture rather than re-rendering. Texture Correction (along with Disable View) is one of the options available in the pop-up menu by right-clicking the viewport name. A Z-Buffer is used to keep track of each object’s distance from the camera. Enabling Z-Buffer Wireframe Objects causes the wireframe objects to be drawn from back to front. If your wireframe lines seem to be disappearing, it could be that the viewport is drawing the lines in whatever order and some lines that should appear in the back are being drawn on top of the ones in the front. Enabling this option helps prevent that. Force 2-Sided makes both sides of all faces visible. For example, suppose you have a sphere with a hole in it. This setting enables you to see the interior surface of the sphere through the hole. Figure 2-11 shows a sphere with a star-shape cutout of its surface. The left image has the Force 2-Sided option disabled, and the image on the right has it enabled.
Figure 2-11: The Force 2-Sided option makes the interior of objects visible.
The Default Lighting toggle deactivates your current lights and uses the default lights. This option can be helpful when you’re trying to view objects in a dark setting because the default lighting illuminates the entire scene without requiring you to remove or turn off lights. You
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can also specify whether default lighting uses one light or two. The one-light option creates a single light positioned behind the viewer and at an angle to the scene. Scenes with one light update quicker than scenes with two lights. Making selected objects visible You use Shade Selected Faces (F2) to shade selected subobject faces in red, making them easy to see.
The Shade Selected Faces (F2) option, which shades selected subobject faces, is different from the Views➪Shade Selected menu command, which turns on shading for the selected object in all viewports.
The Use Selection Brackets option displays white corners around the current selection. Selection brackets are useful for helping you see the entire size of a grouped object but can be annoying if left on with many objects selected. Uncheck this option (or press the J key) to make these brackets disappear. The option to Display Selected with Edged Faces helps to highlight the selected object. If this option is enabled, then the edges of the current selection are displayed regardless of whether the Edged Faces check box is enabled. Figure 2-12 shows a futuristic character with his upper legs selected with the Display Selected with Edged Faces option and the Use Selection Brackets options enabled. These options make the current selection easy to see.
Figure 2-12: The Display Selected with Edged Faces and Use Selection Brackets options make identifying the current selection easy.
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Using clipping planes Clipping planes define an invisible barrier beyond which all objects are invisible. For example, if you have a scene with many detailed mountain objects in the background, working with an object in the front of the scene can be difficult. By setting the clipping plane between the two, you can work on the front objects without having to redraw the mountain objects every time you update the scene. This affects only the viewport, not the rendered output. Enabling the Viewport Clipping option places a yellow line with two arrows on the right side of the viewport, as shown in Figure 2-13. The top arrow represents the back clipping plane, and the bottom arrow is the front clipping plane. Drag the arrows to set the clipping planes. You can quickly turn Viewport Clipping on or off by right-clicking the viewport name and choosing Viewport Clipping from the pop-up menu. Enabling Fast View The Fast View option speeds viewport updates by drawing only a limited number of faces. The spinner value determines how often faces are drawn. For example, a setting of 5 would draw only every fifth face. This option renders viewport updates much quicker and gives you an idea of the objects without displaying the entire object.
Figure 2-13: The clipping planes can be used to show the interior of this car model. Clipping Plane markers
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Tutorial: Viewing the interior of a heart with Clipping Planes You can use the Clipping Planes setting in the Viewport Configuration dialog box to view the interior of a model such as a heart. To view the interior of a heart model, follow these steps: 1. Open the Heart interior.max file from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. This file has an anatomical heart model created by Viewpoint. 2. Choose Customize➪Viewport Configuration to open the Viewport Configuration dialog box. Enable the Viewport Clipping option and the Force 2-Sided option, and then close the dialog box. 3. The Clipping Plane markers appear to the right of the viewport. The top marker controls the back clipping plane, and the bottom marker controls the front clipping plane. Drag the bottom clipping plane marker upward to slice through the heart model to reveal its interior as shown in Figure 2-14. Figure 2-14 shows the interior of the heart model.
Figure 2-14: By using Clipping Planes, you can reveal the interior of a model.
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Setting the Field of View You can also alter the Field of View (FOV) for the Perspective view in the Viewport Configuration dialog box. To create a fish-eye view, increase the FOV setting to 10 or more. The maximum FOV value is 180, and the default value is 45. You can also change the Field of View using the Field of View button in the Viewport Navigation Controls. The Viewport Configuration dialog box, however, lets you enter precise values.
See Chapter 26, “Working with Cameras,” for more coverage on Field of View.
Grabbing a viewport image It’s not rendering, but you can grab an image of the active viewport using the Tools➪Grab Viewport. Before grabbing the image, a simple dialog box appears asking you to add a label to the grabbed image. The image is loaded into the Rendered Frame Window, and its label appears in the lower-right corner of the image, as shown in Figure 2-15.
Figure 2-15: A viewport image can be grabbed using a menu command found in the Tools menu.
Altering the Viewport layout Now that you’ve started to figure out the viewports, you may want to change the number and size of viewports displayed. The Layout panel, shown in Figure 2-16, in the Viewpoint Configuration dialog box offers several layouts as alternatives to the default layout (not that there is anything wrong with the default and its four equally sized viewports). After selecting a layout from the options at the top of the panel, you can assign each individual viewport a different view by clicking the viewport and choosing a view from the pop-up menu. The view options include Perspective, User, Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, ActiveShade, Schematic, Grid (Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Display Planes), Extended (Asset Browser, Motion Mixer, Biped Animation WorkBench, MAXScript Listener, HW Standard Material), and Shape. Views can also be set to Camera and Spotlight if they exist in the scene. Each camera and light that exists is listed by name at the top of the pop-up menu.
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Figure 2-16: The Layout panel offers many layout options.
Using Safe Frames Completing an animation and converting it to some broadcast medium, only to see that the whole left side of the animation is being cut off in the final screening, can be discouraging. If you rely on the size of the active viewport to show the edges of the final output, you could be way off. Using the Safe Frames feature, you can display some guides within the viewport that show where these clipping edges are. The Safe Frames panel of the Viewport Configuration dialog box lets you define several safe frame options, as shown in Figure 2-17, including the following: ✦ Live Area: Marks the area that will be rendered, shown as yellow lines. If a background image is added to the viewport and the Match Rendering Output option is selected, then the background image will fit within the Live Area. ✦ Action Safe: The area ensured to be visible in the final rendered file, marked with light blue lines; objects outside this area will be at the edge of the monitor and could be distorted. ✦ Title Safe: The area where the title can safely appear without distortion or bleeding, marked with orange lines. ✦ User Safe: The output area defined by the user, marked with magenta lines. ✦ 12-Field Grid: Displays a grid in the viewport, marked with a pink grid. For each type of safe frame, you can set the percent reduction by entering values in the Horizontal, Vertical, or Both fields. The 12-Field Grid option offers 4 ×3 and 12 ×9 aspect ratios. The Show Safe Frames in Active View option displays the Safe Frame borders in the active viewport. You can quickly enable or disable Safe Frames by right-clicking the viewport name and choosing Show Safe Frame in the pop-up menu (or you can use the Shift+F keyboard shortcut). Figure 2-18 shows an elongated Perspective viewport with all the safe frame guides enabled. The Safe Frames show that the top and bottom of my dinosaur will be cut off when rendered.
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Figure 2-17: The Safe Frames panel lets you specify areas to render.
Figure 2-18: Safe frames provide guides that help you see when the scene objects are out of bounds.
Live Area lines Action Safe lines Title Safe lines User Safe lines
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Understanding Adaptive Degradation When you are previewing a complex animation sequence in a viewport, slow updates can affect the timing of the animation. This can make proofing your work difficult and would require many additional, fully rendered tasks. The feature in Max that addresses this issue is called Adaptive Degradation, and although it sounds like a weapon that some alien might use to disarm you, it enables you to force a viewport to display at a pre-specified number of frames per second. If the display update takes too long to maintain this rate, then it automatically degrades the rendering level in order to maintain the frame rate. This option is very helpful because when you’re testing an animation, you are not as concerned about the model details or textures. The Adaptive Degradation panel is available in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, as shown in Figure 2-19.
Figure 2-19: The Adaptive Degradation panel maintains a defined frame rate by degrading the rendering level.
You can enable Adaptive Degradation by using the Views➪Adaptive Degradation menu command (or by pressing the O key). Adaptive Degradation, when enabled, is used only for animation sequences where the objects are updated within the viewport quickly. If the animation isn’t progressing, then enabling and disabling Adaptive Degradation has no effect.
You learn to animate objects in Chapter 29, “Animation and Keyframe Basics.”
In the Maintain FPS box in the Degrade Parameters section, you enter the frame rate that you want to maintain. The General Degradation selection specifies the render level used by all inactive viewports; the Active Degradation selection is used by the active viewport. You can select several rendering levels in each section.
Another way to speed the frame rate in the active viewport is to disable (D) the inactive viewports.
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The Reset on Mouse Up option forces Max to render at the specified rendering levels when the mouse is released. The Show Rebuild Cursor option makes the cursor visible as the viewports are rendered. The Update Time is the amount of time between rendering updates. At a setting of 0, each frame must be completely rendered before the next frame is attempted. The Interrupt Time value is how long Max waits before checking to see whether the mouse has moved. Defining regions The Regions panel, the final panel in the Viewport Configuration dialog box, enables you to define regions and focus your rendering energies on a smaller area. Complex scenes can take considerable time and machine power to render. Sometimes, you want to test render only a portion of a viewport to check material assignment, texture map placement, or lighting. You can define the size of the various Regions in the Regions panel of the Viewport Configuration dialog box, shown in Figure 2-20.
Figure 2-20: The Regions panel enables you to work with smaller regions within your scene.
After you’ve specified a Blowup Region or a Sub Region, you can select to render using these regions by selecting Region or Blowup from the Render Type drop-down list on the far-right end of the main toolbar and clicking the Quick Render button. After clicking the Quick Render button, the specified region is displayed as an outline in the viewport and an OK button appears in the lower-right corner of the viewport. You can move this outline to reposition it or drag its edge or corner handles to resize the region. The new position and dimension values are updated in the Regions panel for next time. Click the OK button to begin the rendering process. The difference between these two regions is that the Sub Region displays the Rendered Frame Window in black, except for the specified sub-region. The Blowup Region fills the entire Rendered Frame Window, as shown in Figure 2-21.
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You can learn more about Render Types and the Rendered Frame Window in Chapter 43, “Rendering Basics.”
Figure 2-21: The image on the left was rendered using the Sub Region option; the right image used the Blowup Region.
The Virtual Viewport is a feature that lets you zoom in and pan within the viewport image using the numeric keypad. This feature is available only if you are using the OpenGL display driver. You can check to see which display driver you are using by selecting Help➪About 3ds max. This command opens a credits screen that lists the current driver. You can change the current display driver in the Viewport panel of the Preference Settings dialog box. If you have OpenGL set as the current display driver, then you can select Use Virtual Viewport to display the viewport in the area to the right. Using the Zoom, X, and Y Offset values, you can specify where the virtual viewport looks or you can drag the rectangular outline in the visible screen to the right. Once the Virtual Viewport feature is enabled, you can use the divide key (/) on the numeric keypad to turn the virtual viewport on and off. Use the plus (+) and minus (-) numeric keypad keys to zoom in and out, and use the 2, 4, 6, and 8 keys on the numeric keypad to pan within the virtual viewport.
The Virtual Viewport feature is available only if you are using the OpenGL driver. If you’ve specified either the Software Z-Buffer or the Direct X driver, then this option isn’t available.
Working with Viewport Backgrounds Remember in grade school when you realized that you could immediately draw really well using tracing paper (where all you needed to do was follow the lines)? Well, it’s not quite tracing paper, but you can load background images into a viewport that can help as you create and position your objects. Loading viewport background images The Views➪Viewport Background menu command (Alt+B) opens a dialog box, shown in Figure 2-22, in which you can select an image or animation to appear behind a viewport. The displayed background image is helpful for aligning objects in a scene, but it is for display purposes only and will not be rendered. To create a background image to be rendered, you need to specify the background in the Environment dialog box, opened using the Rendering➪ Environment (keyboard shortcut, 8) menu command.
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Figure 2-22: The Viewport Background dialog box lets you select a background source image or animation.
If the background image changes, you can update the viewport using the Views➪Update Background Image menu command (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+B). This is helpful if you have the background image opened in Photoshop at the same time. You can update the background image, save it, and then immediately update the image in Max. The Views➪Reset Background Transform menu command automatically rescales and recenters the background image to fit the viewport. You should use this if you’ve changed the viewport size or changed the background’s size. Each viewport can have a different background image. To load and configure a viewport background image, choose Views➪Viewport Background (or press the Alt+B keyboard shortcut). This opens the Viewport Background dialog box, shown previously. The Files button opens the Select Background Image dialog box, where you can select the image to load. The Devices button lets you obtain a background from a device such as a Video Recorder. If an environment map is already loaded into the Environment dialog box, you can simply click the Use Environment Background option. Keep in mind that the background image will not be rendered unless it is made into an Environment map.
I cover environment maps in Chapter 43, “Rendering Basics.”
Loading viewport background animations The Animation Synchronization section of the Viewport Background dialog box lets you set which frames of a background animation sequence are displayed. The Use Frame and To values determine which frames of the loaded animation are used. The Step value trims the number of frames that are to be used by selecting every Nth frame. For example, a Step value of 4 would use every fourth frame.
Loading an animation sequence as a viewport background can really help as you begin to animate complex motions, like a running horse. By stepping through the frames of the animation, you can line up your model with the background image for realistic animations.
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The Start At value is the frame in the current scene where this background animation would first appear. The Sync Start to Frame value is the frame of the background animation that should appear first. The Start and End Processing options let you determine what appears before the Start and End frames. Options include displaying a blank, holding the current frame, and looping. If you select an animation as the background, make sure that the Animate Background option is selected. Also note that the viewport background is not visible if the Display Background option is not selected. The Aspect Ratio section offers options for setting the size of the background image. You can select to Match Viewport, Match Bitmap, or Match Rendering Output. The Lock Zoom/Pan option is available if either the Match Bitmap option or the Match Rendering Output option is selected. This option locks the background image to the geometry so that when the objects in the scene are zoomed or panned, the background image follows. If the background gets out of line, you can reset its position with the Views➪Reset Background Transform command.
When the Lock Zoom/Pan option is selected, the background image is resized when you zoom in on an object. Resizing the background image fills the virtual memory, and if you zoom in too far, the background image could exceed your virtual memory. If this happens, a dialog box appears to inform you of the problem and gives you the option of not displaying the background image.
You can set the Apply Source and Display to option to display the background in All Views or in the Active Only. Tutorial: Loading reference images for modeling When modeling a physical object, you can get a jump on the project by taking pictures with a digital camera of the front, top, and left views of the object and then load them as background images in the respective viewports. The background images can then be a reference for your work. This is especially helpful with models that need to be precise. You can even work from CAD drawings. To load the background images of a brass swan, follow these steps: 1. Choose File➪New (or press Ctrl+N) to open a blank scene file. 2. Right-click on the Front viewport to make it the active viewport, and choose Views➪ Viewport Background (or press Alt+B). The Viewport Background dialog box opens. 3. Click on the Files button, and in the File dialog box that opens, select the Brass swanfront view.jpg image from the Chap 02 directory on the CD-ROM. 4. Select the Match Bitmap, Display Background, Lock Zoom/Pan, and Active Only options, and click OK to close the dialog box. The image now appears in the background of the Front viewport. 5. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 for the Top and Left viewports. Figure 2-23 shows the Max interface with background images loaded in the Front, Top, and Left viewports.
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Figure 2-23: Adding a background image to a viewport can help as you begin to model objects.
Summary Viewports are the window into the Max world. Remember that if you can’t see it, you can’t work with it, so you need to learn to use the viewports. You can also configure viewports to display just the way you desire. This chapter covered the following topics: ✦ 3D space and the various viewport types ✦ The various Viewport Navigation Control buttons ✦ The Rendering Level and Display options in the Viewport Configuration dialog box ✦ The other panels of the Viewport Configuration dialog box that allow you to change the layout, safe frames, and regions ✦ How to use Adaptive Degradation to maintain a constant frame rate for viewport animation sequences ✦ A viewport background image In the next chapter, you find out all the details about working with files, including loading, saving, and merging scene files. You also learn about External References (XRefs) and how to use them to manage scene creation in a workgroup. The next chapter also covers import and export options for interfacing with other software packages. ✦✦✦
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