Missing my xyz arrows on my objects

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to 3dmax9 and don't know what happened, but I was working on a project and the next thing I realized was when I right clicked on my object to either move, rotate or scale it, the arrows that are suppose to pop up don't. I have to end up going into my other windows to move or rotate my objects, or scale it. Can anyone please help me by telling me how in the world I can get my objects to work correctly? Here's an example of what I'm trying to explain. To rotate an object, you right click on the object and click rotate. When you do this, there are suppose to be circles that pop up around your object for the xy, and z axises. They don't show up. When you choose move, there are suppose to be arrows for all 3 axises that show up so you can move your mouse over them to move the object in any direction, those don't show up. When you click on scale, a small scale for all 3 axises are suppose to show up so you can scale it in any direction. Those don't show up. This is making working on my movie project a really big pain in the butt. Any help on a quick fix would be greatly appreciated. You can email your help directly to my email at scottactor@yahoo.com or post it here and I'll try to find it.

Thanks for any help you folks can givem e to fix this problem.

[Steve_Curley]

Press "X".

[Anonymous]

Or make a search about Transform gizmo missing. :) :)

[Steve_Curley]

😄

[Anonymous]

I've tried "X" and everything else including uninstalling the program and doing a clean install but nothing seems to get the directional arrows to re-appear.

[Steve_Curley]

Views Menu | Show Transform Gizmo.

Reinstalling Max will frequently do nothing if the problem is one of configuration, because uninstalling does not remove the config files, installing does not overwrite them, and many settings are stored within the scene file(s).

Do you see nothing at all or just thin dark red lines instead of the normal Gizmo?
Also remember you must have a transform tool selected to see them - the "select" tool only shows the dark red one.

If you still can't see them, start Max, create a single Box. Save the scene, zip it then attach it to a reply so we can take a look. There are other possibilities not directly related to the gizmo which can affect it.

[Anonymous]

Gotta love the Gizmo! It's one of the best tools and the best looking compared to other 3D packages. I'm sure glad they didn't make the Gizmo gray scale like they did with the icons :)

[Anonymous]

That’s another way to bring it back.

ivan

[Steve_Curley]

That's exactly the option which "X" toggles ;)

Also, if the View Menu option is Off, pressing "X" (or toggling the option above) will do nothing. The Views option overrides the "On" toggle.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all your help people. I've tried EVERYTHING, even asked engineers at Autodesk and they gave me suggestions, but when I follwed the instructions, 3dmax completely stopped working. So what I did was do a restore to about a week ago when everything was working great. The problem was still there but the program was working. So then I unistalled the program. Then went into C drive and did a disk cleanup, and then went into the program files and deleted EVERYTHING to do with 3dmax. Then shut down my computer, and waited 30 minutes and then turned it back on and reloaded 3dmax from scratch. When I launched it everything was working like new again. I then created a new restore point so if it happens again, I can go back to this date and do it all over again.

So I want to thank all of you that posted your help and support. My special effects are back up and running again and I couldn't be happier.

[Anonymous]

I’ve never seen such a hard way to get back the transform Gizmo, but obviously it can happen. Glad you found the solution.

Just a tip; make a backup copy of your INI file saving all the customizations you did, if something happens again, that saves time.

[EdMabe417]

I was having the same problem and had tried everything listed here with no luck. What finally worked was this:

Customize Menu - Preferences - Gizmos Tab

Checking "Transfer Gizmos" On did not help, BUT, if I changed the size of the Gizmo, from whatever value was there and bingo, the Gizmo display was back. Weird.

[Anonymous]

Heyy, I was going crazy with this problem but figured it out so had to make an account just to help oithers.

It turned out all I had to do was press 'W'

Hopefully this helps someone with the same problem.

P.s

Pressing X didn't work for me, and all I had was red lines for my axis, I guess I locked it.

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

(Pre Max 2014) X toggles the visibility of the Gizmo. No tool selected = no Gizmo, which is why it came back when you pressed W. There is also an option on the Views menu which will hide it completely (not even the red lines will show).

Note that in 2014 the X key no longer toggles the Gizmo visibility by default.

[Anonymous]

Oh my goodness. I am a newb to 3Ds max and I did my whole last project using gizmo to change the shape of my objects and it was not working this time. All I had to do was click select and move. Haha thank you. 

[Anonymous]

thank you! BIG help. i was going crazy

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Some threads are timeless....  

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Some steps to solve this problem:

- go to Customize the user interface

- search for Transformation-Gizmo show

- choose a button, maybe CTRL+T

- assign the button

- close

- press this button

> you will see the red lines

after that go to Settings > Gizmo

- now you have to enable the showing of the Gizmo again (like shown above)

done.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Good post.  Otherwise you can just use the default hotkey which is now Control Shift X.  (Instead of just X)

Best Regards,

[mikitelep]

Hello, i just want to say that you helped me so much and thank you for your comment :)).