Beta 5 zoom: thingies go invisible
by Ray Depew · in Artist Corner · 07/16/2006 (2:24 pm) · 4 replies
I don't have Constructor on my list of projects at Mantis yet, so I'm putting this here.
I was trying to add lattice windows to a building today, and I ... well, here are the details.
Create a cube-shaped brush. Make it pretty thin, say X 4, Y .5, Z 3.5. (I think the thickness is irrelevant, but you never know ...) Go ahead and create some more stuff, just for fun. Now, select the thin brush and zoom on it in the Side view.
See how both the selected brush and the gizmo disappear? They're still there, and they should be displayed, and when you zoom out enough, they come back. But when you zoom in just far enough, they disappear.
This doesn't happen in Perspective view; only in the orthogonal views.
Ray
I was trying to add lattice windows to a building today, and I ... well, here are the details.
Create a cube-shaped brush. Make it pretty thin, say X 4, Y .5, Z 3.5. (I think the thickness is irrelevant, but you never know ...) Go ahead and create some more stuff, just for fun. Now, select the thin brush and zoom on it in the Side view.
See how both the selected brush and the gizmo disappear? They're still there, and they should be displayed, and when you zoom out enough, they come back. But when you zoom in just far enough, they disappear.
This doesn't happen in Perspective view; only in the orthogonal views.
Ray
#2
07/16/2006 (9:22 pm)
Do you think it is just the clipping plane of the camera? 
#3
Ray:
Was your brush's center located on the X=0 plane or somewhere else?
I suspect what you're seeing is the currently naive way that we're zooming the camera in the orthographic views. We're physically moving the camera closer to the plane we're viewing ie: the YZ plane at X=0 in the right or left views. So it is possible to move the camera past a brush on the way to zooming in closer.
You should be able to see this in effect by moving the camera close to your brush and then drag the brush along the x-axis towards the camera in the side view. The brush will disappear in the side view. You can also see this with the Orc Tower in the top view and zooming -- the roof of the tower will disappear.
What we need to do is adjust the field of view while keeping the camera beyond the current geometry, and is something that still needs to be done.
I suspect that you're not seeing this in the perspective view because there you have more control over the camera's targeting and you'd expect to be flying in and out of the geometry.
One way to work around this for now is to set a workplane on the brush. This will move the camera's target to the brush's origin and give you more room to zoom. You could use Edit->Workplane->Move to Brush's Origin (or the button in the Tools Form's Display tab) as this won't change the orientation in the world, only the position.
Does that make sense or have I missed the point?
Thanks.
- LightWave Dave
07/17/2006 (11:57 am)
Greetings!Ray:
Was your brush's center located on the X=0 plane or somewhere else?
I suspect what you're seeing is the currently naive way that we're zooming the camera in the orthographic views. We're physically moving the camera closer to the plane we're viewing ie: the YZ plane at X=0 in the right or left views. So it is possible to move the camera past a brush on the way to zooming in closer.
You should be able to see this in effect by moving the camera close to your brush and then drag the brush along the x-axis towards the camera in the side view. The brush will disappear in the side view. You can also see this with the Orc Tower in the top view and zooming -- the roof of the tower will disappear.
What we need to do is adjust the field of view while keeping the camera beyond the current geometry, and is something that still needs to be done.
I suspect that you're not seeing this in the perspective view because there you have more control over the camera's targeting and you'd expect to be flying in and out of the geometry.
One way to work around this for now is to set a workplane on the brush. This will move the camera's target to the brush's origin and give you more room to zoom. You could use Edit->Workplane->Move to Brush's Origin (or the button in the Tools Form's Display tab) as this won't change the orientation in the world, only the position.
Does that make sense or have I missed the point?
Thanks.
- LightWave Dave
Associate Dave Calabrese
Cerulean Games