pls help -navigating through large complex scenes is becoming impossible

[Anonymous]

I am losing my hair here.... someone please help, it seems the navigation tools in Maya are absolutely terrible.

I am working on a large map scene for a game, i have imported the scene into Maya.

At first its ok, i can dolly, tumble, zoom etc around for a bit. But after a while as i sort of "walk through" the level as it were it becomes really difficult to navigate, using the tumble tool everything moves fast and everything starts getting skewed in the view as if the pivot point is at some random location, zooming in and out wont necessarily take your screen in or out! but rather up/down/left/right almost as if you were panning or something.

I have tried all manner of tool options, pivot round centre, round object, round selection, i have tried framing selection by pressing "f" - even this is wonky at best, sometimes the framed mesh is still off screen!

I literally can not work like this, its impossible, its like im trying to tame some wild lion which is operating the camera, i gotta be gentle and then suddenly it all goes **** up, i dont know what to do, someone please help, surely there must be a better way to navigate around scenes, this is ridiculous..

The picture below is just typical of what i have to deal with.... notice how the domes there are skewed and stretched, this is while i have tumble set to around object and point of interest (ive tried all the combos...), zooming in or out actually moves the view up and down!! not into towards the object or anything.... i just.... i just dont know why this would work this way... im at a loss and have been stuck just trying to bloody navigate and have done no work at all for 2 days....

.

[faline.custodio.da.silva]

@Anonymous

This could be a scene scaling problem or a problem with your camera. Would you be able to send me the scene file in a private message so I can have a look and see what's going on? I'd be happy to help you resolve this issue. 🙂

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

thanks for the reply, i would love to send you the file but unfortunately it is over 200mb! give me some time to upload it somewhere if thats ok?

[Anonymous]

i sent a PM!

[faline.custodio.da.silva · Accepted solution]

After having a look at the scene I was able to see what's going on. (also replied with a PM and screen cast)

This is a very large scene with many models and it's heavy to run in the view-port all at once so the very first thing you want to do is setup some Display Layers and set parts of the scene to wire frame or hidden so you can work faster.

So now to fix the problems your experiencing with your camera. The scenes unit of measurement - Window > Settings/Preferences > Settings > Working Units > Linear was set to centimeters and the entire model was only a few centimeters tall. So that was the first thing to fix set it to feet or yards. Second was the actual scale of the models after switching from centimeters. So you need to scale it up and you should scale this to something relative to real life - so for example you could make the palm trees like 30 units tall and then everything around it will be scaled realistically. This helps later on with texturing and rendering.

Scaling all the objects in the scene will present problems with Camera Clipping - basically increase your far clip to something like 500,00 and you'll be able to zoom out super far without the model disappearing - then the opposite for near clip set this to something like 0.1 and you can zoom in very close without the model disappearing. That should do the trick!

Cheers

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Faline,

I think this is worth mentioning as it drove me insane for several days; i found the real culprit and solution to my problem. Perhaps you may want to update the solution given above.

Although your tips helped, they did not unfortunately ultimately solve the underlying issue which was, after a while of navigating, my view becomes distorted/stretched/skewed, seems like my pivot is way off somewhere random, etc etc

Well it seems the real reason was i was using "panning" instead of "tracking" the camera when in perspective view. This is because i rebind my hotkeys so i can move the camera around easier, i accidentally set the hotkey on the wrong thing! and all this time i was panning the camera not tracking it! this causes it to lose centre focus the more you pan around and then when you try to zoom/dolly or rotate, things get very weird and frustrating!

I think this is a point that needs to be made clear for everyone, especially newbies. WHEN WORKING IN THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW ALWAYS TRACK THE CAMERA, DO NOT PAN!

Your suggestions have really helped though, using layers has made working on large scenes much more bearable and i am now more aware of standardising my units across my work.

[faline.custodio.da.silva]

@Anonymous

This would have been discovered if we tried resetting your prefs first.

Reset Maya to Default

That is an easy was to isolate the problem if it's due to user settings.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Heh you'd think so but i never use the alt + MMB to track, its just so awkward. So even after i wouldve done a reset i wouldve first thing assigned a new hotkey for tracking(or what i thought was tracking but was indeed panning!) so perhaps it wouldve gone amiss regardless!

When i used to work with 3D Studio Max about a decade or so ago i dont ever recall messing with hotkeys, i think back then the middle mouse button wasnt really used as much, so alt + LMB is rotate, alt + RMB is track and the mouse wheel would be zoom or dolly. I never had a problem with this. But in newer versions and in Maya, tracking is set to alt + MMB which is so terribly awkward to use frequently. So i have to set a hotkey and that was the bases of all this halabaloo

[faline.custodio.da.silva]

@Anonymous

Yeah I know what you mean I like to have all my hotkeys exactly how I'm used to working and that has caused some confusion for me in the past as well.

On my home setup I use a naga mouse that has keys on the side you can map with the synapse and use with your thumb. I also have the nostromo keypad (like the 3rd one I've owned - had them since it was a Belkin product back in the day.) And I have my left hand on that instead of the keyboard.

So over the years every time I would update Maya or use new software I would check all my maps to make sure it all worked. Backing up my hotkey maps was always a must too because it always takes a while to setup from scratch.

Anyways, glad you sorted this out and got to the root of the problem!

Cheers,

Faline

[Anonymous]

haha what a small world!

I've had this for a decade and i used to use it with 3D Studio Max all the time! granted i no longer use it atm, i have just gotten back into 3D modelling/Animating but i think i may set it up again! I'm a bit saddened to learn that the Belkin product was bought out by Razor... i was looking to purchase an updated version but Razor are selling them for a ridiculous price tag (about £50!) whereas i bought this thing about a decade ago for about £20! seems like a very scummy move from Razor, buy out a product/design and then hike up the price : \