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The Walk Through feature includes several keystrokes for controlling the camera's movement. The arrow keys move the camera forward, left, back, and right (or you can use the W, A, S, and D keys). You can change the speed of the motion with the Q (accelerate) and Z (decelerate) keys or with the [ (decrease step size) and ] (increase step size) keys. The E and C keys (or the Shift+up or Shift+down arrows) are used to move up and down in the scene. The Shift+spacebar key causes the camera to be set level. Dragging the mouse while the camera is moving changes the direction in which the camera points.

A handy alternative to Walk Through mode is the Walkthrough Assistant, which is found on the Animation menu. This utility opens a dialog box that includes buttons for creating and adding a camera to a path. It also has controls from turning the view side to side as the camera moves along the path.

Cross-Reference

The Walkthrough Assistant is covered in more detail in Chapter 22, “Animating with Constraints and Simple Controllers.” •

Rotating a view

Rotating the view can be the most revealing of all the view changes. When the Orbit (Ctrl+R) button is selected, a rotation guide appears in the active viewport, as shown in Figure 2.9. This rotation guide is a circle with a square located at each quadrant. Clicking and dragging the left or right squares rotates the view side to side; the same action with the top and bottom squares rotates the view up and down. Clicking within the circle and dragging rotates within a single plane, and clicking and dragging out side of the circle rotates the view about the circle's center either clockwise or counterclockwise. If you get confused, look at the cursor, which changes depending on the type of rotation. The Ctrl and Alt keys also can speed and slow the rotating view.

FIGURE 2.9

The rotation guide appears whenever the Orbit button is selected.

Note

If you rotate one of the default non-perspective views, it automatically becomes an Orthographic view, but you can undo the change using the Views⇒Undo View Change command or the Shift+Z shortcut. •

Maximizing the active viewport

Sooner or later, the viewports will feel too small. When this happens, you have several ways to increase the size of your viewports. The first trick to try is to change the viewport sizes by clicking and dragging any of the viewport borders. Dragging on the intersection of the viewports resizes all the viewports. Figure 2.10 shows the viewports after being dynamically resized.

Tip

You can return to the original layout by right-clicking any of the viewport borders and selecting Reset Layout from the pop-up menu. •

FIGURE 2.10

You can dynamically resize viewports by dragging their borders.

The second trick is to use the Maximize Viewport Toggle (Alt+W) to expand the active viewport to fill the space reserved for all four viewports. Clicking the Maximize Viewport Toggle (or pressing Alt+W) a second time returns to the defined layout.

Maximizing the viewport helps temporarily, but you can take another step before convincing your boss that you need a larger monitor. You can enter Expert Mode by choosing Views⇒Expert Mode (Ctrl+X). It maximizes the viewport space by removing the main toolbar, the Command Panel, and most of the Lower Interface Bar.

With most of the interface elements gone, you'll need to rely on the menus, keyboard shortcuts, and quadmenus to execute commands. To reenable the default interface, click the Cancel Expert Mode button in the lower right of the Max window (or press Ctrl+X again). Figure 2.11 shows the interface in Expert Mode.

FIGURE 2.11

Expert Mode maximizes the viewports by eliminating most of the interface elements.

Controlling camera and spotlight views

You can set any viewport to be a Camera view (C) or a Spotlight view ($) if a camera or a spotlight exists in the scene. When either of these views is active, the Viewport Navigation Control buttons change. In Camera view, controls for dolly,