From the course: 3ds Max 2017 Essential Training

Using hotkeys - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2017 Essential Training

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Using hotkeys

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- [Voiceover] The icon buttons for Viewport navigation and for object transforms are an easy way to get to those tools, however, when you get into using 3ds Max on a daily basis, these buttons are really gonna slow you down because you're gonna need to move, rotate and scale objects all the time, you're gonna need to constantly be moving around in the Viewport and going back and forth to these icons is just going to add extra mouse miles and it's going to actually impact your productivity. In order to effectively use a 3D program like 3ds Max, you need to memorize the most basic hotkeys especially for Viewport navigation and transforms. Viewprt navigation in 3ds Max is accomplished with the hotkeys associated with the middle mouse button. If you've got a three-button mouse, then you're set. Almost all Window's mice have three buttons. They usually have a wheel as well. If you've got a wheel then turn that wheel and you can dolly forward and back but that is an incremental dolly, you don't have a lot of control. If you wanna dolly forward and back with more precision then hold down the wheel or the middle mouse button if you don't have a wheel, at the same time as holding down the Control Key and the Alt key and now you're able to dolly forward and back. And you can be in any tool while you do this. I could have the Move tool active, select my object, and I can dolly forward and back with Control + Alt and middle mouse. Same thing in the 2D orthographic views, Control + Alt + middle mouse to dolly. To tumble or orbit, you would use Alt and middle mouse. We could go over to the perspective view, hold down the Alt key and hold down the middle mouse button or wheel and now I'm able to orbit or tumble, also known as arc rotate. And by the way, in this situation we will never get a Dutch tilt or canted angle, it's designed to keep the level horizon line at all times. To position the camera left to right or up and down just use the middle mouse button. Okay, I'll just deselect that object to clarify the view a bit, hold down middle mouse and drag left to right to truck or track and then drag up and down to pedestal. If you want to constrain to only one axis, you can use Shift and middle mouse. That'll let you move just left and right or just up and down. Those are the primary hotkeys for the Viewport navigation and then we have hotkeys for the transforms and selection tools. To activate the select object tool, just use the "q" key on your keyboard. the move tool is "w." Rotate is "e" and scale is "r." The q, w, e and r hotkeys are standardized across Autodesk applications. They're exactly the same in Maya. So once you've memorized those, your workflow will be greatly accelerated because you're not going to be having to fish around for those icons all the time.

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