3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [23]
Cross-Reference
You can customize the buttons that appear on any of the toolbars. See Chapter 4, “Customizing the Max Interface and Setting Preferences.” •
FIGURE 1.4
The main toolbar includes buttons and drop-down lists for controlling many of the most popular Max functions.
If you select the Customize⇒Show UI⇒Show Floating Toolbars menu command, several additional toolbars appear. These are floating toolbars. You also can make them appear by selecting them individually from the toolbar right-click pop-up menu. These floating toolbars include Axis Constraints, Layers, Extras, Render Shortcuts, Snaps, Animation Layers, Containers, MassFX toolbar, and Brush Presets.
The InfoCenter toolbar is permanently attached to the title bar. Using the InfoCenter toolbar is covered later in this chapter.
Using tooltips and flyouts
All icon buttons (including those found in toolbars, the Command Panel, and other dialog boxes and windows) include tooltips, which are identifying text labels. If you hold the mouse cursor over an icon button, the tooltip label appears. This feature is useful for identifying buttons. If you can't remember what a specific button does, hold the cursor over the top of it and the tooltip gives you its name.
All toolbar buttons with a small triangle in the lower-right corner are flyouts. A flyout is a single toolbar button that expands to reveal additional buttons. Click and hold on the flyout to reveal the additional icons, and drag to select one. Figure 1.5 shows the flyout for the Align button on the main toolbar.
FIGURE 1.5
Flyout menus bundle several toolbar buttons together.
Note
The General panel of the Preference Settings dialog box contains an option for setting the number of milliseconds to wait before the flyout appears. •
Using the Quick Access toolbar
Located next to the Application Button on the title bar is the Quick Access toolbar. This mini toolbar includes icons for the following commands: New Scene, Open File, Save File, Undo, Redo, and Set Project Folder. If you click the down-arrow icon on the right end of the toolbar, you can access a menu with options to hide any one of the icons or the entire toolbar. You can also select to show the toolbar beneath the Ribbon.
Learning the main toolbar
On smaller-resolution screens, the main toolbar is too long to be entirely visible. To see the entire main toolbar, you need to set your monitor resolution to be at least 1280 pixels wide. To scroll the toolbar to see the end, position the cursor on the toolbar away from the buttons, such as below one of the drop-down lists (the cursor changes to a hand); then click and drag the toolbar in either direction. Using the hand cursor to scroll also works in the Command Panel, Material Editor, and any other place where the panel exceeds the given space.
Tip
The easiest way to scroll the main toolbar is to drag with the middle mouse button. •
Toolbar buttons that open dialog boxes such as the Layer Manager, Material Editor, and Render Setup buttons are toggle buttons. When the dialog box is open, the button is highlighted in light gray, indicating that the dialog box is open. Clicking a highlighted toggle button closes the dialog box. Corresponding menus (and keyboard shortcuts) work the same way, with a small check mark appearing to the left of the menu command when a dialog box is opened.
Table 1.1 lists the controls found in the main toolbar. Buttons with flyouts are separated with commas.
Using the Ribbon
The Ribbon interface is a deluxe toolbar with many different tool sections. It currently is populated with a variety of modeling tools that are collectively called the Graphite Modeling Tools. You can turn the Ribbon on and off using the Graphite Modeling Tools button on the main toolbar. When enabled, tabs for the Graphite Modeling Tools, Freeform, Selection, and Object Paint are displayed.
Cross-Reference
Most Ribbon