General questions from a beginner.

#1

Three totally unrelated issues I’m having, so hopefully at least one has a simple answer.

First of all, the biggest annoyance: I’ll often see black vertical lines flickering on the screen as I highlight vertices in any mode. I’ve got a Radeon 9200 video card, which I’m pretty sure has something to do with it, since when I was using Wings a year or so ago I don’t remember seeing this happen. I’m going to try messing with video settings, but if anyone else has some advice, fire away.

Second, I’m a really picky sort of guy and I haven’t managed to find a good way to rotate or scale objects around any point other than the center of the object. Any sort of pivot points I can use? I made the mistake of modelling the head and body of a character in to different directions, and rotating the head into place while still keeping it lined up with the right plane of symmetry was a bit awkward.

And third, I recently read in a different thread that holding ALT while in tweak mode lets you move selections relative to their normals instead of the camera, a feature I was wishing I had lately. BUT I’m still keeping my old habits and using the Maya camera controls, where ALT is used for camera movement instead. It seems like a silly problem, but there it is.

Anyway, hopefully this will get me some much needed information. Just five minutes of reading this forum gave me a few new insights into the workings of Wings, so I’ve got high hopes.

#2

I don’t really have any advice here other than the standard “use the latest drivers from ATI”. I have an ATI 9500 Pro and do not experience any screen drawing issues

a good way to rotate or scale objects around any point other than the center of the object.

In Wings menu Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced tab, enable “Advanced Menus”
Many (most) menu commands will have a “.” after them indicating R-click functionality. It’s very, VERY important, while modelling in Wings, to keep an eye on the “Info” bar at the bottom left. When you hover over a command in a menu, the info at the bottom left will let you know the effects of L, R, M, or ALT-clicking on the menu item. In general, L-clicking performs the default command, R-clicking on a menu item will allow you to choose additional geometry on which the command is based (better known as “vector ops”), M-clicking performs the command based on the selected item’s local normal, and Alt-clicking activates the magnet feature (aka soft selection in max…not sure what it’s called in Maya). Also, in general, most commands can use any vert, edge or face, or group of such, as an “origin” for a given operation.

BUT I’m still keeping my old habits and using the Maya camera controls, where ALT is used for camera movement instead. It seems like a silly problem, but there it is.

And the answer is equally silly… STOP THAT! :wink:
I cut my teeth on Max and, when I first started using wings, I used the max camera mode. I later found that using the Blender or Mirai camera mode adds the very nice feature in that you can continue to rotate the model and add/subract from the selection set while in the middle of a command. Neither Max nor Maya camera modes allow this and Maya camera mode has the additional caveat of conflicting w/ entering magnet mode (intiated by ALT-R_clicking on relevant menu commands). So, I’d say it’s time to break an old habit. :slight_smile:

#3

<< use any vert, edge or face, or group of such … >>

There’s some info re vector behaviour on the ‘vectors’ page here, if of use / interest. (I think rotate was used as an example, btw)

www.puzzledpaul.com

pp

#4

I’d second the recommendation to switch the Blender camera mode, I think it is the most intuitive and useful one, especially for changing angles while editing.

#5

Seems reasonable to post one more odd question here.

I think I’ve got a toggle active that I don’t even know exists. When I try to rotate anything, it will move it by excruciatingly tiny fractions of degrees instead of a nice easy motion of the mouse. Crazy amounts of precision, enough to specify a hundredth of a degree if I felt like it. And in that way that only tiny insignificant problems can, it’s driving me totally nuts. Some time in the past few days I flipped on the “ultra high precision rotate” option or something and I don’t know why or how.

#6

Nope, just a Windows bug in the last couple versions. I’d hold shift for nice, large adjustments, that seems to be a decent time saver til its fixed.

#7

<< Nope, just a Windows bug in the last couple versions. >>

… and the devs are aware of this - just ‘slipped thro’ the net’

<< hold shift for nice, large adjustments, that seems to be a decent time saver til its fixed. >>

shift > 15 deg ‘steps’, cntrl > 1 deg

Yep, annoying - but not the end of the world :slight_smile:

These Cntl / shft (sometimes combined) constraints work across the board, btw - just rotate that’s messed (temporarily) up.

pp

edit
I assume you’re aware of the Tab input facility, ie just press Tab during drag?

#8

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