The design proposal to adaptive Zoom/Pan of the viewport navigation system.

[macrod]

Many users voted this Small Annoying Thing:

http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/76763-small-annoying-things/suggestions/1534691-zooming-in...

So, Max 2015 comes with an adaptive solution in which you can sample the geometry under your mouse to determine the navigation speed, so you never "stick somewhere and can hardly zoom/pan" unless doing a Zoom Extent.

I know this makes some of you very angry, but you don't need to be like that because it is software, for which patches can always be made after release.

Some of you want a Preference entry to switch between the old and new navigation systems. This might be your immediate idea after you get angry, but won't resolve anything, because:

- You get 2 worlds but neither makes you happy.

- You cannot switch between the 2 quickly.

My original design proposal which was not implemented in 2015 release (Autodesk is not my own company, please understand):

- Orbit behavior should not be included in this SAT, and can be easily revert to the old one.

- Only do adaptive sampling when a modifier key (possibly Ctrl + Alt + Zoom/Pan tool active + left mouse down) is enabled, this determines your future navigation speed, later, you can pan/zoom (without using the modifier key) anywhere in the view, the speed stays what you sampled/told Max to take.

- If you never did a sampling, the behavior is like Max 2014 and earlier.

- Zoom Extent to reset the speed. Everyone knows this legacy trick, so even if you don't know the feature and accidentally did a sampling and feel the speed is bad, you can reset the speed easily like what you did for Max 2014 and earlier.
- Sampling on the home grid (treated as geometry) is possible but there is a speed limitation.
- The sampled speed with the modifier key can also be used for navigating Wireframe/Bounding Box views. The sampling itself should not be enabled in Wireframe/Bounding Box views.

An example would be: You have a huge city scene and you look at the top of a skyscraper, you Ctrl + Alt + Zoom/Pan tool + click to sample on the geometry of the skyscraper top, then even if the skyscraper is out of view, you still pan/zoom at the speed you sampled (so you are at acceptable speed for neighboring buildings), until you feel the speed is not good for some zooming factors (you get too close to some geometry, or you want to quickly zoom to faraway buildings), you can either use the modifier key again or use your favorite legacy Zoom Extent trick.

This is the best solution I can imagine which also preserves existing user convention. Let me know your opinion, but please don't be destructive, I'm wise enough and I shout out loud against those features you (and I) hate at first sight, and in this thread let's focus on this feature only, many thanks!

[Anonymous]

What exactly is zoom/pan tool? I do not see such tool in 3ds Max. There is only zoom mode, and pan mode. Separated.

And NO professional user uses those manually by selecting them in the bottom right corner. They use hotkeys, such as alt+mmb to orbit, mmb to pan, mousewheel or CTRL+ALT+MMB to zoom. 

Ctrl and a Alt hotkeys also initiate selection add or subtract mode. pressing both alt and ctrl keys together leaves randomly one of those (add or subtract selection) active, resulting in random selection operation when combined with left click.

Seriously....  your proposal interferes with so many of 3ds Max hotkey mechanics, it is not even funny.

And assuming it would somehow work. As i said, no professional user ever enables navigation tools like zoom or pan from UI, they all use hotkeys.

Now hotkey for Zoom is Ctrl+Alt+MMB... You are already holding down these, and now while you are holding down these, you also have to click RMB to sample for focal point? But if you sample under mouse cursor, then you need to place your cursor to the appropriate location, but if you start to move your cursor, you will immediatelly start to unintentionally zoom. And if you do not hold those keys, then you are not in zoom mode, so according to your proposal, you could not perform tha sampling in a first place. Does not make much of a sense.

Or pan mode... Can you imagine holding down MMB to pan, and then holding also Alt+Ctrl, and then pressing down also LMB while keeping MMB pressed? Do you realize how clumsy that is?

The argument about game engine navigation is completely flawed nonsense. Game engines use totally different camera navigation styles where you actually move around the world in some limited speed. In 3ds Max, speed is unlimited. What differs is not SPEED, it is SENSITIVITY. Which is different depending on a size of component you focus at relative to established scene unit scale. 3ds Max vs Cryengine/UDK are completely different navigation styles. You are comparing apples to nuclear powerplants.

You should really leave it to someone who has some experience in UI/UX design, and instead just help me convince autodesk it is broken in current state.

[macrod]

"What exactly is zoom/pan tool?"

Communicating with different languages is difficult. I hope the whole world knows "/" means "or". "Mode" or "tool", as long as understandable, it's not important how it is called in this case.

You will have 2 ways to do sampling:

- Ctrl + Alt + "MMB click without moving mouse".

- When in Zoom/Pan mode (cursor changes, the non-professional way in your words), you can also use Ctrl + Alt + LMB.

These 2 DO NOT interfere with anything:

- Ctrl + Alt + MMB zoom means you need to MOVE the mouse, so it is distinguished with sampling.

- Ctrl/Alt for selection add/subtract only happens for LMB when NOT in Zoom/Pan mode.

Every little detail were considered and also explained to the extreme, so you can set your mind at rest. If you really read carefully the previous posts and used a little self-thinking, you should already get that information.

The 2nd half of your previous post really tells me you didn't understand me. So, that's it, if you didn't understand, the information really is in previous posts.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to assume you're representing yourself and not autodesk here. At all. 

- You have one person I know of who claims to understand what you're talking about, if anyone else wants to vouch, please, do so cause to me your behavior is completely bogus.

You're acting like a Steve Jobs, to me you're simply behaving like a brick wall. I'm not going to debate about Steve Jobs. (Apple is overpriced but ok). - And overrated [You seen the new "trashcan"?]

- You want your "thingie", fine, go for it. We don't understand. We're probably to retarded. Well I am alteast. I know Rawalanche is been here for a long time and he is on alot of forums all around. I'm pretty comftable in that sense to say if he doesn't understand 85% of the users here won't understand what the hell you're trying to explain.

Basta. Good luck having you "thingie" out there. No one'll understand nor want it. You don't seem to GET we simply want the old system back or the choise at a minimum. 

You want to deny us all of this, you simply want to go on screwing around with the broken navigation, or implement another one.

Sorry but who is not understanding here?????

I'm out of this thread, you're simply impossible to debate with.

/ stand for "or" - good one, thanks for the confidence. **** it.

[macrod]

Even if you don't understand it now and never faced my questions directly and never think about my words but just complain generally or even try to destroy (of course I don't assume that) something simply due to your prejudice to me, you'll get it perfectly done in a later release if my idea is implemented.

From your last post, I infer that you won't try to dilute the topic any more, which is great that other readers and I won't have the burden to read too much and guess the meaning of the words with 4 stars. We serve the user community seriously, but we are not a great target to "4-starts".

[macrod · Accepted solution]

The final state is expected to be:
- Orbit center is already reverted to 2014 behavior in previous submissions.
- To make it consistent, the sampling only happens explicitly, when Ctrl + Alt is down.
The choice of Ctrl + Alt as the modifier key is based on the fact that Ctrl increases the speed and Alt decreases the speed, Shift is already used for constraining operations to horizontal and vertical directions.
- Sampling only happens under mouse location, despite of whether Zoom About Mouse Point is on in CUI.
- The problem in the SAT is about Zoom/Pan speed, so the sampling is expected to happen when Zoom/Pan mode is active (when you see the cursor is changed to the magnifying glass or hand).
- When Zoom/Pan mode is active, Ctrl + Alt + LMB click (this can happen on mouseDown event) does the sampling.
- There're other situations (users are more often in these situations):
Ctrl + Alt + MMB move == an alternative way to Zoom
MMB move == the alternative way to Pan
Or even nothing is used.
In these situations, the cursor is not changed to indicate Zoom/Pan mode is active, we have to use Ctrl + Alt + MMB click (happened on mouseUp event) without moving the mouse to do the sampling.
This also applies when you see Zoom/Pan cursors but still use the alternative ways.
- Mouse wheel scroll == an alternative way to Zoom
In this situation, Ctrl + Alt + wheel scroll can be used as sampling, so you can: move the cursor over a distant object, scroll the wheel (sample at every scroll) to zoom in to that object fast, and every scroll is at a proper speed, and you don't need to do multiple explicit sampling manually.
- Defining sampling for both MMB and LMB is to not force users to move their finger (for me, index) between MMB and LMB when doing a sampling, honoring fast operations.
- Sampling can also happen on home grid with speed limitation, the behavior is expected to be the same as the current implementation.
- After a sampling, if Ctrl + Alt is not down, or if Ctrl + Alt + mouse move to zoom, subsequent navigation sticks at the sampled speed, so even if you sampled object is moved out of view, you are still at that speed, without sampling a faraway geometry to accidentally get a too-fast speed.
- Zoom Extent can also give you a suitable navigation speed, as in 2014, if users do not know the sampling functionality.
- Otherwise, the software by default uses 2014 behavior.

[Steve_Curley]

Any more of these accusations and recriminations, from either party, and this thread will be locked (and possibly removed from the forum). You've been warned.

[macrod]

Hi Steve_Curley,

The final state is in message 25.

Of course you are welcome to remove those destructive/unhelpful messages and preserve the valuable ones, I believe you have that discretion.

Even if the whole thread is removed, it simply means that the thread should not be initiated from the beginning, which again means Steve Jobs was right.

[jens.diemer]

If the new adaptive Zoom/Pan in 2015 the reason for the lagging zoom/pan in complexe scenes?

[lightcube]

I've spent more time in 2015 than 2014 in the last week, which is a first for me. And I can say that the interactive zoom/pan is certainly the most daunting new feature. I like the concept behind the change, but I really hope the idea of letting the user manually sample is implemented ASAP. The default behavior should be the legacy method and the user should manually choose when to set a new zoom level from objects under the mouse. Here is a sample scenario where the pan/zoom is a nightmare now:

Add any high-poly mesh to the scene. It can be a Teapot with 12 Segments.

Now add an Edit Normals modifier to the teapot.

Now spend five minutes panning/zooming this scene. You'll find yourself getting really frustrated really fast because each time you MMB to pan or scroll the mouse wheel, a new zoom level is sampled and one second it will be at the teapot's scale, and the next it will be at the Normals scale. (So you get a pan of 6 inches moving the mouse making the view move  100 % and in the next swipe, moving 0.01%.) To get any consistenscy, you have to stop your brain from thinking about design and focus on placing your mouse at a specific spot over and over... which interupts the brain, slows you down, and is very annoying.

This feature will be good IF it is fixed and improved. Otherwise, this reinforces the longstanding irritation with AD about not extensively testing things in realistic environments. There are things I want to enjoy in 2015... but this really REALLY needs addressed soon.

[Anonymous]

we already had 2 threads on that topic, one which basicly opts to rewind back to the old manner or atleast give us a CHOISE. The second thread opts to continue with this new manner of navigating and "improve/change it' a little. But without the choise for us to chose.

I know someone checked in with the developers to see if they're aware and on it. He let them know but he cannot comment at this time about the progress on this.

So my personal take on this is they're working on something to this regard, but what exacly or which path they took with it is going to be a mistery untill they unleash the 2nd service pack.

btw the path could also be "not doing anything to it" lol, i really don't know. I just know they are aware. There were some clear outbursts from pple to this regard. If one didn't hear he'd have to be living in a cave without communication capabilities.

finger crossed they do the right thing; being "give us something that works".

[macrod]

Shawn, you're among the few persons who truly understand the problem.

[macrod]

"one which basicly opts to rewind back to the old manner or atleast give us a CHOISE. The second thread opts to continue with this new manner of navigating and "improve/change it' a little. But without the choise for us to chose"

No. The 2nd gives you the choice in the most handy way. The ways to switch in the 1st (INI/script/preference) are curbersome.

[lightcube]

I'm sure plenty of people understand it... 🙂

I think that part of the problem is based off of who you are and what you do with Max. If you are working with Edit Normals or any other kinds of objects that present this, it's a nightmare. But I'm assuming most of the ArchViz guys aren'y using Edit Normals a lot... so they don't notice this. I have scenes where I didn't notice the problem, especially when I was just dabbling in 2015. But now I decided to move a project over, I am seeing this as a major problem.

[macrod]

You said, "I really hope the idea of letting the user manually sample is implemented ASAP. The default behavior should be the legacy method and the user should manually choose when to set a new zoom level from objects under the mouse."

So, I think you understand the problem well (not because you understand the normal issue). You understand the value of making sampling manual, in an easily accessible mannar, instead of employing the cubersome INI/script/preference.

Plus:

I found the normal issue on 28/Jan/2014.

For many times, you know, if you, the valuable users, shout out loud in various forums, bugs will get fixed sooner, then if bugs are only found by me.

[Stefan_L]

---

@macrod wrote:

...

For many times, you know, if you, the valuable users, shout out loud in various forums, bugs will get fixed sooner, then if bugs are only found by me.

---

I beg your pardon for getting slightly off topic, but english is not my mother language, and I really don't understand the meaning of this sentence.

Could you try - uhm - an "export version"?

[macrod]

I make a correction:

then -> than

If you find something extremely annoying, shout out loud in forums, Autodesk senior management could notice it and push a fix sooner. 

[Stefan_L]

Ah, get it, thank you. 🙂

Might be true for lately released features.

But for all the old bugs I'd replace "could notice it and" with "has a theoretical chance to notice it, but will never take it and won't" 😞

[dgorsman]

Bugs have a greater chance of being fixed, or features modified towards what is commonly requested, when they are submitted by many people (volume being numbers of people, not a few yelling loudly) with appropriate and reasonable supporting arguments and information.

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, hope this thread is still active.
Meanwhile I switched to Max2016 and still this super annoying viewport-behaviour didn´t change 😞
already in Max2015 the 3dsMax.ini entry AdaptiveNavigation=0 didn´t work for me. Same thing in Max2016 now.

I just wanted to ask, if anyone found out something, maybe there is another .ini-entry one could make or some other kind of work around?

any hint would be much appreciated!!

thanks and cheers!

[Anonymous]

That is very strange, because in Max 2016, it is disabled by default. They realized it was a bad idea, so they quietly reverted it back. In Max 2016, you can use the same ini string to enable it, but it is disabled by default.