Bryce "Zoom to Selection" Function in Blender?

As a newcomer to Blender, I’m trying to reproduce a few workflow scenarios I once used in Bryce, but now in Blender I can’t figure out how to do one simple task that was the backbone of much of my output:

In Bryce I could render a scene, then using a bounding box to select an area, render the selection and see a newly rendered scene that would then fill the 3d view (called “Zoom to Selection” in Bryce). I could then select another area in that “new” scene, render that selection, and so on, and so on (re-iteratively) quite a ways. Essentially you are slowly zooming in. Each new render was detailed enough to see what I wanted to zoom into further.

The closest I’ve found in Blender is the “Render Border” function. Unfortunately, the rendered selection is too undetailed to see well enough to effectively zoom a second time, much less allow for successive iterations. Also, “rendered border” only fills the selected area within the “camera” view. If the selected area is near a border of the main view, then zooming the view to see greater detail in the selection results in part of the image scrolling outside any possible view.

At any rate, if anyone here has worked with the “Zoom to Selection” feature in Bryce, and has a suggestion as to how to recreate it in Blender, I would be overwhelmed!

Blender does it on the fly. Menu is the 3Dview header. I don’t think it can do zoom to selection.


Welcome to BA forums.

Lock Camera to View (N Panel), and then MMB zoom in while looking through camera.

you can select an area In camera windowthen render only that part!

if you usedCtrl+B to create a render border in the camera view turn off the’Border’ tickbox in the Render / Dimensions panel

happy bl

true blender renders on the fly but that’s not like bryces way :wink:

best I can suggest is set view as you want it ctrl+alt+0 [“0” on keypad not sure on lappy] but on view menu is set active cam to view (same thing lol {had to look for that})
then set to rendered, you could lock camera to view (on left hand panel “N” to open~close it )
set your sample’s fairly low depending on your comp then you can zoom~pan as you like
not quite the work flow your used too but a lot faster then Bryce when you get used to it

I found a solution that will work. When I’m in 3D view looking thru the camera I can move the origin of the zoom by holding shift+MMB drag. I can then zoom in on the new area of interest with MMB-wheel. The only limitation of this is that, at a certain point, blender doesn’t let me zoom in anymore. I can live with that though.

Thanks for all the suggestions; it helped me narrow down my options.

LarryPhillips:

I don’t quite understand you…sorry…:frowning:

Craig Jones:

I’m doing abstract art that involves mirrored surfaces with many reflective bounces. Unfortunately, the method you suggest changes view in a way that distorts the characteristics of the scene. Thanks though!:wink:

RickyBlender:

Already doing that…now that I’ve discoverd shift+MMB and Mouse Wheel zoom, this seems to be the ticket.

heddheld:

Same problem as with Craig’s suggestion…this would work for most scenes, but not mine, because of the reflections. Thanks though…