topic Re: Zooming focus on Selected Camera in 3ds Max Modeling Forum

Zooming focus on Selected Camera

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 16:08:07 GMT

I've been dealing with this for a few years now, but I can't stand it anymore.

My problem is that when I select a camera and then press Z to orbit around the camera as you would a selected object, the viewport view flies out 50 miles from the selected camera, making the selection a tiny dot on the screen.

How do I set it so I can select a camera and press Z to focus orbit tightly around the camera (used for simple camera manipulation and placement)?

Re: Zooming focus on Selected Camera

kgokhangurbuz — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 21:20:12 GMT

Hi;

My simplest solution to offer would be, linking a dummy object to your camera, selecting it and hitting "Z" for zoom extents.

Simply follow these steps;

-Create a camera

-Create a dummy helper (Create > helpers > dummy)

-While dummy is selected, hit Shift+A for quick align (this aligns two objects by their pivot points positions)

-Now that you have your dummy object on your camera, go to Select and Link button, and drag from your dummy to your camera. You can find the select and link button at the top left of your 3ds max toolbar.

-Now your dummy is linked to your camera, whenever you move your camera, dummy will move with it, but when you move your dummy, your camera will not move.

-You can select your dummy and hit "z" to zoom extents.

Regards;

Re: Zooming focus on Selected Camera

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 15:02:51 GMT

Thanks for the input and quick response.
I'll give that a try, but yeesh! for my work I have upwards to 10 Max scenes with 20-30 cameras in them sometimes- seems like a lot extra steps just to get it so I can orbit tightly around a camera!!

Thanks again for the input!!

Re: Zooming focus on Selected Camera

kgokhangurbuz — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 15:13:52 GMT

Hey,

Actually it's not a long process as it sounds.

If you are familiar with macro's, you can simply create a macro to create
your cameras with a dummy linked to them.

Just try it and you will see that it's actually fast.

Regards;

Re: Zooming focus on Selected Camera

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:04:37 GMT

I'm not that familiar with creating macros, but it's definitely on my list of things to learn, so this will give me a good excuse.

I'm just surprised that this is an issue in 2016 Max. I was hoping there was a feature in the setting menu that would fix this.

Thanks again for your response.