Hi guys, Not sure if this belongs here but this seems to be where most questions about max are asked. Anyhow, the problem i am having is that when i try and zoom in it only zooms at the centre of the axis, so i can't actually zoom into individual bits of a scene/character without having to move the entire character to the centre of the viewport. Anyone have any ideas on how i could cure this as it makes it a bit difficult for me as a relative novice, and furthermore its time consuming. Cheers Guys. Neil. P.S Thank you all for your help previous to this, got my results through from my uni course today and got a 2:1.

You have to change the center of the Arc Rotate tool.
To do this just go to the very lower-right part of the screen, where there is the "Arc Rotate Tool" button (the one with a circle, next to the "Pan View" button), press and hold it, and then select the second one from the popup list. This will make the Arc Rotate Tool to be centered around your currently selected object, and the third option will center it around the currently selected subobject you are in (which may be more suitable for your case).

Hope this helps

Hi there,

Thanks for the response, but its not quite what i am after. Even after changing that when i use the plain zoom button it still only zooms to the centre of the viewport and not to the area that i am clicking in.

However, if i use the zoom area button or zoom selected whatever it is called that seems to work so i will just have to get used to using that instead.

Thanks for your response.

Neil

I can't directly answer your question but I will say that I don't know anyone who regularly uses max and actually uses the zoom tool. Isn't it much quicker to use ctrl+alt+middle mouse button, or just mouse wheel? you can focus on any part of a scene or character by selecting an element (face, verts etc) and pressing 'z'

congrats on the 2:1!

edit: ah if you insist on using the zoom tool you can make it zoom on mouse position in customize>preferences>viewports, in the bottom right section check 'zoom about mouse point' (perspective) and ortho too if you like :)

Thanks for that, that is what i was after.

I was using the scroll wheel on the mouse but it did the same thing and went to the centre of screen rather than where i was pointing. But its all sorted now. Thanks very much.

Neil

by the way sorry if I sounded snooty, I just knew a guy once who did use the zoom tool and he was painfully slow to watch working.. he did everything by clicking the relevant icon :)

Actually the easiest/best way to do it is to make a hotkey for zoom extents (selected), select an object and press the hotkey and it's now the object you zoom to.