Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
The three movement tools work well when the view is focused on either your entire scene or a specific
selection. The A key is used to center on all visible items in the scene. You can use the rotation tool to
spin around your entire scene, and press Shift+A to focus on a selection. By selecting the area you are in-
terested in or working on, you can center your perspective and rotate around the area in question. Subse-
quent chapters cover selections in more depth, but you can get started selecting by simply clicking and drag-
ging across some surfaces (polygons, edges, or points) in your scene. After you select something, pressing
Shift+A will center your view on that selection.
Practice: Navigating in Space
Open the file
Navigation_Practice.lxo
from the included DVD. Spend a few minutes moving around
the scene. The more you navigate the space, the more comfortable it will become. Start by moving around
the objects generally, and then choose various sections of the objects and manipulate the perspective until
you get a good view of them. See if you can get a side view showing all three objects aligned in the view.
Remember to utilize all of your newly learned navigation tools. Rotate, pan, and zoom your view. Use the A
key and Shift+A centering tools to center your view on an area of interest.
The practice file starts out with the viewport containing all three objects from an angle, as seen in
Figure
1-9
.
Try to duplicate the view shown in
Figure 1-10
.
A few minutes practicing with a simple scene such as
this will reduce frustration when you have a more complex scene and are still familiarizing yourself with the
controls.
Moving Objects in 3D Space
Now that we have discussed moving around, you can begin to look at moving the objects that you create.
There are three methods for basic object manipulation: move, scale, and rotate. Each of these tools (known
as
transform tools
) can be activated by clicking the corresponding button on the left side, toward the top of
the user interface, or by using their hot keys. Each transform tool has some quirks or additional features that
will speed your workflow if you take advantage of them.
After a transform tool is activated, a property tab appears in the bottom-left corner. The fields in this tab
enable you to enter numeric values for each of the transform functions as well as control of some additional
options for each tool. These values can be entered by clicking in the fields and entering a value, by clicking
on the arrows to increase or decrease the values by small increments, or by clicking and dragging the arrows.
Figure 1-9:
Starting perspective
