3ds Max 'center of rotation' with this new driver

mbronto · Post by **mbronto** » Sat Aug 21, 2010 11:03 am

Fred, thank you for responding to the concerns. To make it easier to understand the problem, I would recommend you show the attached video to the engineers looking at this problem. I think it is self-explanatory. Notice that the problem occurs when you tilt above and over the center of rotation horizon.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/8118722/21519669

Thank you, Mike

Post by **mbonk** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 5:02 am

mbronto wrote:Fred, thank you for responding to the concerns. To make it easier to understand the problem, I would recommend you show the attached video to the engineers looking at this problem. I think it is self-explanatory. Notice that the problem occurs when you tilt above and over the center of rotation horizon.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/8118722/21519669

Thank you, Mike

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately, not quite self explanatory: When the plug-in thinks your not moving anything, i.e. if you temporaly let go of the cap, it will recalculate the center of rotation, and if it doesn't find anything to hit on it stays put where it was - so it shouldn't start moving in the "correct"direction. Also because you say you are rolling when the motion looks like spinning could you try the following for me, please: switch off "Lock Horizon" (used to be called "Disable Rolling") and do the same test.

Markus

Post by **mbonk** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 5:34 am

Valen Wagner wrote: For example, in 3ds Max, create a Box primitive that is 10 x 10 x 200 units in size. Then convert to an Editable Poly. Then zoom in to one of the ends and select some vertices. Normally at this point if you rotate with the SpacePilot it will use the selected verticies as the center point. But with this new driver, the center point remains at the center of the box, not the selection, so the model just goes flying off the screen when I try to rotate. This seems pretty useless, or am I doing something wrong?

No, you are not doing anything wrong, the plug-in seems t be, though: it should be putting the center of rotation on the surface near to the middle of the screen.

Post by **rstadie** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 7:44 am

Hi philosofix,

philosofix wrote:I too would like to know this. The equivalent of hitting the Z key would be lovely. This is such a wonderful tool it is a shame this is not working. ...

"Z" seems to be "Zoom All Extends All Selected" by default - and should be the same as the "Fit" Button on your 3D Mouse. Can you confirm this does not work?

philosofix wrote:...Another caveat is the constant 3D camera it creates with every movement, leaving having the Layers Manager open no less than a headache with the constant refreshing. Both fixes would be nice. Let us hope.

We have not changed this behavior with our latest plug-in (I was not even aware of this). We are now tracking the issue with ID 5491.

Post by **rstadie** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 7:51 am

Hi Valen (and Phil999),

Valen Wagner wrote:I'm not sure how the MMB is supposed to work. And I don't see anything about it in the Help files...?

With the latest 3Dconnexion Software version the MMB should set the Center of Rotation - and the blue cross should appear there (only if you are in Object Mode, otherwise your rotation center is always the camera you are looking through...).

Does this work?

Phil999 · Post by **Phil999** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 8:39 am

no. Still the same, MMB does pan the view (using the latest 3-11-3 driver). It is not possible for me to manually set the center of rotation.

mbonk wrote:"Lock Horizon" (used to be called "Disable Rolling")

this is something I overlooked. Thank you for the hint.

Phil999 · Post by **Phil999** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:10 am

correction: I can change the center of rotation on the surface of an object. I always tried outside of an object.

Valen Wagner · Post by **Valen Wagner** » Mon Aug 23, 2010 11:50 am

Oh good - MMB works for me too as long as I am mousing over geometry. If they could get the "Auto" fuction working properly then this might be a pretty cool new set of features.

BUT PLEASE ALSO IMPLEMENT THIS INTO MAYA. IT IS NEEDED VERY VERY BADLY!

Thanks.

mbronto · Post by **mbronto** » Tue Aug 24, 2010 8:55 pm

mbonk, the Horizon Lock was on when I did the original test. I understand what the driver is supposed to do and that what is happening to me...should not be. But it is. I would be surprised if you didn't have the same result doing the same thing in your own test. Pick an object, roll on the horizon, then tilt up and roll again. Do you not see that the roll direction reverses? When I am zoomed into a part of an object and I am 'flying' around it, the roll direction is constantly reversing as I am tilting above and below the center of rotation. It is extremely hard to control when this happens.

By the way, I am definitely rolling, not spinning. It is pretty obvious (at least to me) what the difference is. Thanks for your consideration in contuining to look into this.

By the way, if you think my issue is getting to be too different from the other folk's issues, I am happy to open a new thread or move this somewhere else.

Mike

philosofix · Post by **philosofix** » Tue Aug 31, 2010 7:30 pm

When I mentioined the Z key if you have a vertex selected it zooms in on the vertex and spins around that, so sub-0bject selection. It doesn't make logical sense the pug-in chooses the the center of the object most of the time. It should be the User chooses the focus of where it is to look.

What works for me is zooming way in to the object and click where a vertex would be. It then rotates around this for at least long enough to work. The Auto is something else. It has a mind of it's own and I can'r get it to work.

This tool stil is waesome and saves your hands and makes most of the work easier.

I still don't understand how the focus can't be sub-object like Max's, instead of using the center of the object most of the time. The focus seems to only find the center of the object. It does seem to work on a box though. However not on complicated geometry.

deleyt · Post by **deleyt** » Wed Sep 08, 2010 5:30 am

Fred wrote:Sorry for the Delay.
Ive brought this forum post to the attention of the Programmers.
They will be looking into the issue.

Fred

I've heard this exact response in another thread before and never heard anything since....

I'm having the same issue with the auto-zoomcenter in the new driver (3.11.3) and it's driving me mad.
I can understand that the developers want to put in the auto-zoomcenter but I can't understand why they then decide to take out all the other options (like rotating around a selected object/subobject), as they were working fine. There's no way I can set the options back as I had them with the previous drivers! Madness!!!

SO I decided to rollback to the previous drivers, but then my SpaceNavigator isn't recognised by 3D Studio Max 2011.

This needs to be fixed PRONTO!!!

Solidmind · Post by **Solidmind** » Mon Sep 13, 2010 12:53 pm

I´ve just upgraded too 3dsmax 2011 and my Spacepilot is useless for now! This has too be fixed fast!!

Solidmind · Post by **Solidmind** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 2:45 pm

If nothing is happening with this rotate-around-selection issue could you please upload an older driver where this is working?
This is really slowing my productivity down...

Phil999 · Post by **Phil999** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 1:42 am

in a session, working normally, suddenly all axis got reversed after selecting an object. So I opened the driver GUI to change that, but it did not help. The movement was still reversed. So I changed the driver to how it was before, and the movement was again correct. However, the mouse did not react anymore, and 3dsmax2011 crashed.

I work since years with 3dsmax and Space Pilots, such a thing has never occurred. I tend to believe that the new improvements of the driver are no improvements at all. They only open the door for errors. Generally I welcome improvements, but so far the blue 'center of rotation' lead more to confusion, and the reversed axis are very disturbing indeed or possibly even lead to crashes. On one installation I still have the old driver which works flawlessly as always. I could upload it, but I find that 3dconnexion should make it available.

wdc600 · Post by **wdc600** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 6:04 am

my feedback to this is:

- the automatic center of rotation is updating all the time when playing an animation in the viewport and this is reducing the framerate very hard

- the automatic center of rotation sets its pivot point often in the free space or somewhere else and objects are instantly out of view

- always setting the point of rot. manually is no fun !!!

- i have scenes where you can´t set the point of rot. correct it´s always in the air
(for ex. when working with CAD imported files (tet.meshes or large assemblies))

- the beta driver for max 2011 was great! please make a download in the 3dxlabs possible (don´t have the install file any more)

- the good new things are the option to fix the horizon and the autokey cam mode

this really need to be fixed

3Dconnexion Forum

3ds Max 'center of rotation' with this new driver

I made a movie showing the problem.

Re: I made a movie showing the problem.

Re: 3ds Max 'center of rotation' with this new driver