I've been playing around with the Dawn of War mod tools and one important thing to get right is the scale of the model.

The problem is, it seems Relic made some really small models, so whenever I press F for the front viewport, the model looks like a tiny dot.

I tried looking for the solution in viewport preferences but the regions tab seems to be only for rendering purposes.

In a nutshell, how do I set up the viewport so it "zooms in" on that tiny model all the time?

Umm...what modelling package? If its Max, hit the "Zoom Extents All" button when you start up. If Maya, hit 'F' I believe in each viewport. These commands will frame the model completely in each viewport. As for automatically doing this when the program loads...I have no idea.

Edit: Oh wait...you hit 'F'...then this must be Maya. My knowledge ends here. Theres probably a Mel script somewhere that will take care of this.

There's usually a limit to how far you can zoom in, so if the model was made a different program than the one you're using now, the scale might be way off. You might just have to scale it up. Or you can try changing the units you're using and then reopen the file.

I'm using Max6.

Ahh, press Z. That's the default button for "Zoom Extents All" in Max. It should make the model take up the full size of all the viewports.

i think you press A in maya to zoom to the object , i maybe wrong tho ...

I have the same problem, the models were made in Max by Relic but they require a unit system of 1 max unit=1m this mean that plenty of things hit the 0.01 units minimun that Max seem to have on most spinner/textinput UI elements. Also the perspective viewport near-clips the mesh if you zoom in on a major body part (like an arm)

And it mean that the weld tools don't work as the minimum 0.01 for the weld tool demolishes the mesh.

I have no idea how relic worked like that, and if they didn't why didn't they adjust the units to be 1m=100 max units or more rather that scaling up and down as they wanted to export.

Then again maybe I'm just missing something regarding how max units and scale work

Try the Rescale World Units utility.

SilentMobius: its a pain, i'm working on a game using the torque engine, where 1 meter = 1 max unit, and most of the characters are about 1 meter.

model large, rescale, rig, animate. to get around parts of the model dissapearing due to its small size, zoom in User mode to where you want it, then switch it to Perspective so you can rotate it centered on the model. thats how i've found to do it, anyways.

Max works best when the units are kept at 1 unit = 1 inch. I really don't know why companies feel the need to change that. I've worked at places that use 1 unit = 1 meter and 1 unit = 1 milimeter. Both cause problems, but in different ways. It throws of cloth simulations, particle systems, space warps, reactor, etc. Please for the love of god, stop messing with the units! You can always change the Display units to whatever you want without touching the System Units and messing up the internal system. And if you absoluting can't resist changing the System Units to metric, change it to centimeters, because that's the closest metric unit to inches. (sorry for the rant, it's pet peeve of mine)

If you must work with the messed up units, you can change the spinner precision by going into your preferences, in the General tab, and increase the number for spinner precision.

You can also stop the clipping by right clicking on the viewport name, selecting Viewport Clipping, and drag the triangles on the right of the screen to the very top and bottom of their range (drag the top one to the top of the screen, and vice versa for the bottom).