Setting up the Viewport - MODO Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this course, we're going to be focusing on lighting, shading, texturing, and rendering. And this means that you probably want to use slightly different viewport setup to the one that you would use if you were modeling. A modeling viewport is optimized for fast performance and easy readability, very much like what we have here. For a lighting and shading viewport though, you might want to consider having a viewport that more closely resembles what your final render is going to look like. And in model, you can do this by using what's known as the advanced viewport. We're currently using the default viewport which is just a standard open GL view. However, if I move my cursor to the top left of the viewport and click where it says Default, that will open a menu and I can now select the advanced viewport instead. Now, your first reaction is probably to think that this looks extremely bright and white. However, if I launch a render, you'll see that the viewport is actually a very good representation of what the final render actually looks like. So let me just dismiss the Render window. And so one of the benefits of the advanced viewport is that it tells me at a glance that this scene as it's currently set up is way too bright. And that's because I'm using the default lighting and the default material. So one of the first things I'm going to need to do is to turn down this very bright lighting. But before I do that, let's open the Viewport properties by clicking on this cog icon found at the top right of the Viewport. Then I'm going to go to the Advanced options tab, and this controls the options for the advanced viewport. Here, you need to ensure that you have shadows enabled, you're using normal maps and bump maps and most important of all that your lighting is set to scene plus environments. And that means that your advanced viewport is going to closely match your final render. So once these option is set, you can dismiss the viewport properties pop over. And now I need to look at the overall brightness of the scene. So I'm going to switch to the shading tab and I'm going to scroll to the bottom of the shade of tree and expand the environments. And I'm going to select the main environment and reduce its intensity from the default of three down to one. And that reduces the brightness of the scene to a more manageable level. I'm going to do a test render just to make sure that that still correlates with the viewport. And I think it's fair to say that the render matches the viewport reasonably closely. So using the advanced viewport is going to make the task of placing lights much easier and quicker because I'm going to get reasonably accurate feedback in real time. Before moving on, I'd also like to adjust the interface to make it more convenient to work in. So I'm going to reveal the collapsible panels at the top and bottom of the viewport. Just bear in mind that these are only found in the default motor layout. So if you hover your mouse over this bar at the top of the viewport and just locate the little triangle pointing down, if you click on that, that's going to reveal a collapsible tuber, which opens up a lot of options for the viewport. Once you've done that, you can also reveal another collapsible toolbar at the bottom by doing exactly the same thing. And these toolbars will allow me to customize my interface on the fly. So for example, by using this set of icons here at the top center, I can change what is displayed in the main viewport. So for example, I can switch from the irregular 3D view to a UV view, or alternatively, I can open a preview render and just run it straight within the viewport. And once I'm done, I can switch back to the regular 3D view. And these icons that are colored in green allow me to open additional panels. So for example, if I want to open my images panel, I click on this icon and that's going to open clip browser here right on the side of the viewport. And then I can just collapse it again. I can do the same thing over here on the left. I can open an additional 3D view or a UV view, and once I'm done, I can collapse them again. And of course, I can do exactly the same thing using this set of icons on the bottom. So for example, if I want to quickly open a schematic view here at the bottom, I just click on this icon and then click on it again, once I'm done to collapse the panel. So now that I've got my viewport and my interface set up the way I want, I can move on and start doing some basic lighting which we're going to look at in the next video.