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you hold down the Alt key while dragging, and zooms smoothly if you drag the middle mouse button with the Ctrl and Alt keys held down. You also can zoom in quickly using the scroll wheel with the Ctrl button held down, or more slowly with the Alt key held down. You can select options to zoom about the mouse point in the Orthographic and Perspective viewports. If disabled, you'll zoom about the center of the viewport. The Right Click Menu Over Selected Only option causes the quadmenus to appear only if you right-click on top of the selected object. This is a bad idea if you use the quadmenus frequently.

Tip

I've found that using the middle mouse button along with the Alt key for rotating is the simplest and easiest way to navigate the viewport, so although Strokes is a clever idea, I always set the middle mouse button to Pan/Zoom. •

Using strokes

The Stroke option lets you execute commands by dragging a predefined stroke in a viewport. With the Stroke option selected, close the Preference Settings dialog box and drag with the middle mouse button held down in one of the viewports. A simple dialog box identifies the stroke and executes the command associated with it. If no command is associated, then a simple dialog box appears that lets you Continue (do nothing) or Define the stroke.

Another way to work with strokes is to enable the Strokes Utility. This is done by selecting the Utility panel, clicking the More button, and selecting Strokes from the pop-up list of utilities. This utility makes a Draw Strokes button active. When the button is enabled, it turns yellow and you can draw strokes with the left mouse button and access defined strokes with the middle mouse button.

If you select to define the stroke, the Define Stroke dialog box, shown in Figure 4.6, is opened. You also can open this dialog box directly by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging a stroke with the middle mouse button. In the upper-left corner of this dialog box is a grid. Strokes are identified by the lines they cross on this grid as they are drawn. For example, an “HK” stroke would be a vertical line dragged from the top of the viewport straight down to the bottom.

FIGURE 4.6

The Define Stroke dialog box lets you define specific command strokes that are executed by drawing the stroke with the middle mouse button.

With a stroke identified, you can select a command in the upper-right pane. This is the command that executes when you drag the stroke with the middle mouse button in the viewport. For each command, you can set the options found below the stroke grid. These options define what the command is executed on.

All defined strokes are saved in a set, and you can review the current set of defined strokes with the Review button. Clicking this button opens the Review Strokes dialog box where all defined strokes and their commands are displayed, as shown in Figure 4.7.

One of the commands available in the list of commands is Stroke Preferences. Using this command opens the Stroke Preferences dialog box, also shown in Figure 4.7, where you can save and delete different stroke sets, specify to list commands or strokes in the Review Strokes dialog box, set how long the stroke grid and extents appear, and set the Stroke Point Size.

FIGURE 4.7

The Review Strokes and Stroke Preferences dialog boxes list all defined strokes and their respective commands.

Choosing and configuring display drivers

When Max is installed, it loads the latest custom driver called Nitrous and sets the display to use that driver, but you can change the display driver to Direct3D, OpenGL, or to Software if your video card doesn't support the needed drivers.

New Feature

The new Nitrous display driver allows fast, realistic rendering within the viewport. It also lets you render out non-realistic styles. This display driver and its features are new to 3ds Max 2012. •

The Display Drivers section in the Viewports panel of the Preference Settings dialog box lists the currently installed driver. Clicking the Configure Driver button opens a dialog box of settings for