How do you stop this from happening when you zoom into geometry? Its becoming extremely annoying, because its basically preventing from making any intricate edits... If I want to just do standard poly modelling on a normal scale, everything is fine, but once you try to get up close and personal, this happens!

Heres a toenail:-



Now, heres the SAME toenail, zoomed in a FRACTION of a degree closer:-


Theres got to be a way to circumvent this. SURELY!?

Thanks in advance!

Near-clipping-plane from the camera-settings....

From what I know you can do 2 things. Click Perspective and and choose Viewport Clipping and lower the arrows that will appear on the right. The other one is to scale more your object. Sometimes due to the units you are using you might be working with some really small objects. Let me know if it helped.

use user view instead of perspective.

Thanks guys I'll try these suggestions out as soon as I can. I'll let you know if it worked.

Cheers!

Originally Posted by sprunghunt

use user view instead of perspective.

Explain.

Originally Posted by Computron

Explain.

Not to answer for sprunghunt, but just try it. Personally I'd never use perspective mode for modeling. Not only does it make viewport navigation harder, it breaks a number of tools and confuses space relationships. I set another viewport to the ingame FOV merely for viewing.

Originally Posted by Computron

Explain.

user mode has no clipping plane since it's an isometric viewport

like perna I never model in perspective view.

Been a bit busy today, but I'm on it now lol. Anyway, about this "user view", maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but I dont even have a "user view" mode. All I have are the standard orthographic, side, front, top etc', and perspective. Is this something thats only in Max 2012? If so, I have 2011, so its not an option for me.

When I click "viewport clipping" however, that does solve the problem. I just have to move the lower (minimum distance limit I guess) slider and its all good.

Anyway, in terms of perspective view modelling, thats what I've ALWAYS used right from the beginning lol, and I've made a LOT of models upto now! So maybe I'll have to revise my methods a bit and try something else and things will become easier. I noticed something strange last night while trying to model my first human head (probably in the worst, most cumbersome way possible), which seemed to be that ONE of the viewports was lying to me. When I looked at the head from a high-rear angle (persp view), it seemed that the whole head was tapering outward toward the top (but not as in the standard "perpective effect", it was more of a fisheye type effect, as in very curvy), but looking at it from the the 'top' and 'front' views revealed that the two sides of the head WERE infact straight, as they should've been at that stage.

Does anybody know why this happens, and how to still model with a 3D viewport, without being lied to by the perspective view? I can post images of what I mean if necessary, because I'm finding it hard to explain, but the effect is obvious when you see it. Never noticed it before though.

Finally, to Perna, can you take me through how to create a custom viewport with unique settings like FOV as you mentioned (I didn't even know realtime FOV was possible in the viewport)!

Thanks

user view = orthographic

FOV = Field of view, found in the std viewport configuration (right click the viewport label).

A lot of people actually model in perspective view. Probably because that just came naturally to them and they got used to it or something.

Originally Posted by perna

user view = orthographic

That would have made more sense, Had I known that earlier.

i came from orthograhpic modeling(3ds max), but i had to switch to maya and since then i just model in perspective(with the preset maya POV). It was hard to adpapt, but it made sense.
Personally, i think perpective modeling is smarter, as it gives you a closer feedback to the proportions of the asset ingame...

What little modeling I do these days is done in perspective but I keep the ortho hotkey close by because this is an issue all too often.

I personally can't stand ortho because of the lack of perspective, its just weird and disorienting. It makes it hard to get a sense of the depth as you orbit around the object.

Yeah - what they said.

how are you supposed to tell what shape something is in an orthographic view?



If you're getting this issue a lot you're probably working at a silly scale. viewport clipping or not working at a silly scale are your options

Hang on. Whaaaat? I cannot for the life of me model in orthographic view, unless I'm working on mechanical stuff, using blueprints for example. But for anything organic, there is no way I can wrap my head around modelling in ortho. It hurts my brain.

Okay now I can definitely see why it can be good to use Orthographic mode. No perspective distortion! Kind of saves having to keep switching between Persp & the 2D views.

Having said that, I've always been a perspective man myself, and like people from the ortho side, it felt a bit weird switching over lol. At first my eyes were played with a bit and it looked like my model was inside out and upside down (like it was back in the Amiga & Atari days, with all the isometric games)! It didn't take long for my senses to adjust though, and its probably best used with simple, more hard edged geometry, like the Japanese Ritual Platform I tried it on, or anything else that isn't mainly curves and smooth and organic.

I think I'll use both from now on. It feels natural for me to work in perspective, but when I need to be PERFECTLY clear on what certain angles are (which is quite often lol), then clearly orthographic is going to be a lifesaver.

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice! Its been a good read!

For those who feel uncomfortable about working in 3ds ortho, I recommend getting used to it (Just like you had to work to get used to any number of other things to become a 3d artist). You should find you'll have to deal with less of the frustrating issues you've come to just accept in max with viewport navigation being awkward and tools mysteriously breaking, as well as seeing actual size-relationships and angles.

Adjusting proportions while doing technical modeling is common practice, but inefficient. You'll want to finalize major mass (in perspective mode) well before you get into control loops and mesh flow (in ortho mode, where you have to zoom in close and have a perfect overview of mesh distribution and mesh "cleanliness").

My mesh keeps clean, I just use left and front a lot, but as far as a lot of changes I use Perspective, I always have my geo really nice looking, I have never needed to use orth, unless you mean left front and top as well.

I switch to perpective when i zoom out, and to ortho when i zoom in with U and P. I do it so often that i don't pay attention anymore, but yeah, one more workaround because of an annoying "feature".

orthographic views allow you to percieve much more minuete "jank" in edge flow, as the perspective distortion of a non-ortho camera hides smaller distances.

I mix ortho and perspective depending on what im modelling. I find things like faces will never look right without a bit of time in perspective tweaking the proportions.