Viewports and Navigation

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Last updated: 04 Oct, 2016 by luis (Unlicensed)

Viewports

The viewports in Studio are OpenGL® based and display all the scene items (objects, cameras, etc.).
You can create as many viewports in a layout as needed. A viewport can be switched to display a 3D/ 2D viewport, providing perspective and orthographic views.

The buttons at the top of the viewport allow you to quickly change between views:

  • Perspective/Camera allows you to change between the point of view of the different cameras or use the perspective free view. When clicked, a menu appears listing the available cameras and perspective views.
  • The Shading Mode menu changes the display mode of the window. Please see the Shading Modes section below for more details.
  • The Display menu allows you to display/hide certain information over your viewport like scene info, sky preview, grid, compass, region and UV sets. 

Clicking any of the other letters will change the viewport to a 3D perspective or an orthographic view:

  • 3D change to a 3D perspective view; by default it will show the last active perspective in that window. 
  • T for top orthographic view. 
  • D for bottom orthographic view. 
  • L for left orthographic view. 
  • R for right orthographic view. 
  • F for front orthographic view. 
  • B for back orthographic view. 

Pressing the I key on your keyboard will enable/disable the information text displayed in the viewports.

 

Shading Modes

Maxwell Studio provides different shading modes in the viewports. You can choose the appropriate mode by clicking on the display mode menu in the viewport title bar.

The following shading mode options are available:

  • Bounding Box: Only bounding boxes of the objects are shown.
  • Wireframe: Only wireframes are shown.
  • Hidden Line: Like wireframe, but backfacing polygons are not shown.
  • Flat: Flat shading.
  • Toon: Cartoon shading.
  • Shaded: Smooth shading.
  • Texture decal: Textures are previewed in the viewport without shading.
  • Textured: Textures are previewed in the viewport with shading.

The Viewport Grid

The grid visible in the 2D and 3D viewports gives you an indication of how big your objects are. It is recommended to use the grid to check if your objects are the size you intended. Please Scene scale for more details.


The 3D viewport has a grid size indicator at the bottom right of the viewport showing the current grid size. There are two ways to display the grid: Adaptive and Absolute. These options are available in the Preferences (Edit>Preferences>Viewport Rendering). 

  • Adaptive grid will automatically re-size the grid as you zoom in and out of the scene. The grid size indicator will change, providing information about the current grid size. The number shown is the distance between two bright lines in the grid.
  • Absolute grid allows you to set a fixed size for each grid square and will not change when you zoom in and out.

2D viewports will always show an adaptive grid.

Navigation

These are the basic functions to navigate in the graphical viewports (Mac OSX users should switch the Ctrl key for the Command key):
* The terms in blue are cinematographic equivalents.

  • ALT + LMB = Rotate camera around the target origin (Orbit / Fly Around Camera)
  • ALT + MMB = Pan View (Truck / Boom Camera)
  • ALT + RMB = Zoom View In/Out (Dolly Camera)
  • ALT + CTRL + LMB = “Slow-mode” – slowly rotate camera around the target origin.The up/down arrows on keyboard can be used to change how slowly the camera should move in this mode. You can repeatedly press the up/down arrows to adjust, then use ALT + CTRL + LMB.
  • ALT + CTRL + MMB = “Slow-mode” – slowly pan camera.
  • ALT + CTRL + RMB = “Slow-mode” – slowly zoom camera in/out.
  • ALT + SHIFT + LMB = Rotate camera target around the camera origin. (Pan / Tilt Camera)
  • ALT + SHIFT + RMB = Displace camera origin along the look-at direction. This also moves the camera’s focal point (camera target), along with the camera.
  • ALT + SHIFT + MMB = Roll camera. (Dutch Camera)

Additionally, there are quick navigation options when right-clicking on a viewport:

  • Reset Viewport will reset the viewport to a default perspective view.
  • Look at Selection applies to both camera and perspective view and it centers the selection in the viewport without changing the position of the viewer or the camera zoom.
  • Center Selection centers the current selection (objects and/ or groups) in the viewport (Shortcut: C).
  • Center Scene centers the entire scene in the viewport (Shortcut: Shift + C).