- The navigation tools are located in the upper-right corner of your viewport.
- From left to right, the tools are:
- Pan/Move
- Dolly/Zoom
- Rotate/Tumble
- Use your four screen navigation when first starting off
- When using just the 3D view, things may seem in the right place at first but when moving perspective it really is off.
- To Tumble you could use ALT+Left mouse button
- To Zoom ALT+Middle mouse button "click middle mouse button"
- To Pan ALT+Right mouse button
- Shift key moves in even increments
- Selecting an object then holding the control key while dragging with the move/scale/rotate tools will make a copy of the object.
How to Frame an Object in View
- Using the Move/Pan tool roughly center the object in your view.
- Use the Rotate/Tumble tool to properly orient the view.
- Use the Dolly/Zoom tool to push in on your object
- Use the Move/Pan tool to re-center your view.
Why the Four-Way View is Important
When creating in perspective view objects can look correct, but change the angle of the perspective and you might notice what you've been working on is in fact not aligned properly. Four-way view is used to make sure that all your objects are correct in the 3-D space. If an object looks correctly positioned in two of your 2D views, it will be correctly positioned in all views.
- Cinema 4D uses a left-handed coordinate system, if you make a gun-shape with your left hand and then point your middle finger perpendicular to your index finger (facing to your right) you can see that your thumb is the y-axis, your index finger is the z-axis and your middle finger is the x-axis. The ways that your fingers are pointing is positive for that axis and the opposite direction is the negative direction.
- To remember the term "viewport", think of the "porthole" on a ship.
- If you hold down your left mouse button on a particular point and then move to mouse while continuing to hold that button down you will rotate around that point.
- If you hold down shift you can move objects and the coordinates will change in more exact increments.
- You don't move objects around by clicking on the exact axis symbol, it is better to move them by clicking around the object in space.