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Discreet 3ds max 5 Tutorials

Working with 3D Objects / Viewing and Hiding pt. 1

Subtitles of the Movie

Let's look at some basic techniques for viewing and hiding objects. Why don’t we create a couple of objects here and we go up to the tabs panel this time and click on the box object. That would be the same thing as clicking down here in the command panel we just did up here in the tabs. Go in to one of the view ports. Hold down the mouse button and drag to create two dimensions of the box, then release and move the mouse to create the third dimension and then click to end the box creation. Why don't we do that again? Click down and hold and drag to create two dimensions, then release and move and click again. We have created a second box and right click to end the creation process. Let's go down into the perspective window here and here we have two boxes but we can't see them all in the window. So go down to these view port controls and we have two controls that can address this problem. One is zoom extents and right next to it zoom extents all. And zoom extents is going make all the objects in the currently active window visible. It is going to refocus the window so that all the objects are within the window. And zoom extents all simply does the same thing for all four windows. In this case we are only worried about the perspective window so we will just click zoom extents. And it refocuses the window so that we can see all the objects in the scene. Now what happens if for example, we go to the modify tab here and we say this box isn't quite big enough for me. Now it’s about ten feet long, what if I decide I want that box to be 500 feet long and it's about 8 feet wide, maybe I will make it 500 feet wide too and let's see, why not? I will make it 500 feet high too. Now what has happened here? My second box seems to have disappeared and the scene has gotten rather dark. Now what has happened here is that I made my box so big that I am now inside it. The view port is showing me a view from inside the box. So I can click zoom extents and I now see the whole box. What about the other box that was sitting next to it? Let's see if I can find that. One way to attempt that might be to arc rotate. This is the arc rotate button here, let's go and, and what I am rotating now is the view. You notice that in the other windows nothing changes. Cause I am just changing this view as if I am moving a camera around the object. I am not actually moving the object even though it could appear that way. So I am moving my view of the object I am looking at it from all sides but I still can't see that other box. And the reason is because that other box is inside this box. So what I need to do is find a way to hide this box. This box is already selected, if it weren't, we could just go up here to the selection tool and come down and select it. Now there are number of ways to hide this box. One is to go to the display tab on the command panel, click on that, scroll down and get to the hide rollout. Click on the hide selected and it's hidden. Let's go up to the edit panel and undo that. Another way of doing the same thing is to right click in the window and you get hide selection. This time I am going to undo it with a Control Z. Control Z is the same thing as undo in the edit menu. And another way to hide it would be, if it were not selected, and I am going to click off the box here to deselect it, is to come over and click hide by hit, then come over and click on the box and that hides it. The nice thing about hide by hit is that you progressively unclutter the screen as you go, making it easier to pick each object. So for example, going back to test 02, go to the create panel, create a few more spheres here, click, hold, drag and release, click, hold, drag and release, just clutter this situation up tremendously. So these spheres are interpenetrating one and other. I am creating tons of spheres all in the same area. Now I can go to the display panel, go to hide by hit and as I hide each one, others are progressively uncovered, which makes it easier to find them. the same area. Now I can go to the display panel, go to hide by hit and as I hide each one, others are progressively uncovered, which makes it easier to find them.

Tutorial Information

Course: Discreet 3ds max 5
Author: Michael Hurwicz
SKU: 33460
ISBN: 1932072586
Release Date: 2003-10-22
Duration: 9 hrs / 117 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: For Online University members only
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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