A veteran Max user trying to pick up Blender. A few questions.

Hi,
I’m a veteran Max user and I’ve been trying to pick up Blender for a long time so from time to time I’m checking on it and how is development going. I recently decided to give Blender a try again but I found myself facing the same small annoyances that bothered me a few years ago and that kept me from having a more serious dive in Blender. Here are some things I’ve been always trying to tackle.

First thing is dialogs. Is there a way to disable the confirmation dialogs when I try to delete an objects? I did some searching but couldn’t find an answer to this question. The same question goes for vertices, edges and faces. Is there a way to make blender delete the respective elements depending on the mode I’m in without asking me what to delete? For example, if I’m in face editing mode when I hit “X” I want Blender to delete the faces without asking me what I want to delete. I think this should be the logical behavior but maybe that’s just me.

My next question is related to selections. Is there a way to make blender select objects/elements only when they are fully inside the selection? In 3ds Max you can make it so that if you start selecting from left to right and the objects/elements don’t fully fall inside the selection then they don’t get selected. However, if you start the selection from right to left, then you can select the objects/elements even if they don’t fully fall inside the selection. I found that I can make Blender do something similar when I’m in Edit mode and if I click “Limit selection to visible”. Then I can select elements only if they fully fall inside the selection. However, if I don’t want to select occluded faces/edges/verts, I must disable “Limit selection to visible” and then the behavior changes back to selecting elements even if they only partially fall inside the selection.

I would be grateful if someone can help me with these small annoyances. I am really interested in picking up Blender but every time I stumble upon such small but annoying things my enthusiasm fades off.

Thanks for your help in advance!

I’ve made for myself a very simple addon to handle delete without the menu, more like Maya. Maybe you would find it handy as well.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34740

Thanks but it doesn’t seem to work. I’m using Blender 2.73.8. I see it in add-ons but when I enable it the dialogs still come up. By the way, I had to remove the .blend extension from the file because Blender didn’t recognize the script.

Thanks for the info. Your script works but gives an error when in Edit mode. Maybe I should try to somehow piece it together with chafouin’s script.

Another question. In 3ds Max there is a tool called “selection sets”. Is there such a thing in Blender? With selection sets you can select some faces/edges/verts and make something like a group that you can reselect later.

Another question. In 3ds Max there is a tool called “selection sets”. Is there such a thing in Blender? With selection sets you can select some faces/edges/verts and make something like a group that you can reselect later.
Vertex Groups http://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/vertex_groups/vertex_groups.html

Sorry, it’s really something that I made for myself and never intended to share it, so I forgot some pieces of information here.

As Stan said, it doesn’t assign a hotkey. In the Input window, under Mesh add a shortcut for “object.intdelete” and assign it X. Remove other X hotkey assignment.
It’s been working as I expected to work, so I don’t really know about " it wouldn’t always do the “smart” thing: i.e. it won’t, say, delete loose vertices"

I stand corrected. It will delete loose vertices, but not vertices only connected to an edge:


The orange one will be deleted, but the white one won’t. I know it’s a personal convenience script, I’m not making accusations here, just observations :wink:

No worries, Stan :smiley:

The way I model, I think I never ended up with such configuration of vertices, so I never noticed that issue :slight_smile:
If it ever bothers me someday I’ll surely fix it. My blender is a combination of so many modified addons I’ve gathered here and there and adjusted to make it working like maya, it’s certainly not foolproof and clean.

Thanks, Richard. I was aware of the vertex groups but I though there might be something that also saves edge and face selections not just vertices. Any add-on or script to do this?

As for the confirmation dialogs - I really hope there will be an option in the new versions that will allow us to disable them. This way users that don’t want to be bugged by them will have the option to disable it. There’s an undo function so I don’t think these dialogs are necessary.

I’m also trying to make lasso selection work with just left mouse button. I did this and it works as expected but now I can’t select faces/edges/verts by single click. I click on them and as soon as I release the LMB they are deselected. I’m sure there’s a way around this because when I switch to the 3ds Max input preset I can select with a single click and do a box select with the LMB without any problems.

By the way, any other seasoned/long time Max user here that can give his opinion on modeling in Blender? How do you feel it compared to Max? How much has your workflow and speed improved? What do you love in Blender that help you do things that you couldn’t or that took a lot of effort in Max? Can you share your view on the strong and weak sides of Blender in regards to modeling compared to Max after using both programs? I’ll be glad to hear from you. :slight_smile: I’m really interested in moving my modeling to Blender and using Max just for scene management and rendering and would like to hear if it will be worth it to take my time to pick up Blender.

You can use materials for face selections, assign material to selected faces and later select same material and press select button.

The modeling approach in max is quite a bit different from Blender. Learning most of the shortcuts is a must, and it makes modeling in Blender much faster. This, however, takes a bit of your time to get use to it.

To snap something to a nearest grid point look in Object -> Snap menu (or Mesh -> Snap in edit mode). The dropdown you’ve been looking at is the Transform Snapping: you can activate snapping by clicking the magnet icon or toggle it by holding Ctrl while performing transformations, and as MatsuikoHiroka pointed out, there isn’t really persistent “grid” snapping: the ‘Increment’ setting snaps to grid increments, not intersections.

You misunderstand. It will snap to grid points if whatever you’re moving was originally at grid point. But if it was somewhere in-between, it will stay in-between, because it actually moves in grid increments. That way whatever offset from the grid an element had is not lost. If you really need it to stick to grid, just snap to grid first and then move in increments, or first move and then snap to grid, etc.

By the way, if nothing can be done to make the quad view work as in other 3d apps is there an add-on for a better quad-view?

No addons, no, but why? You can just as easily arrange your own viewports, or even drag some of them to, say, another window on another monitor. To avoid repeating the set up, you can make a custom UI layout.

Thanks for the tip. Not ideal but I will try it out.

Because to me the quad view functionality seems broken or unfinished with this issue where it resets on its own. Yes, I am aware that I can drag the handles on the panels and create my own quad view manually. But the problem with this is that each viewport will have it’s own Tool shelf, Properties panel and header at the bottom which is unnecessary clutter. Please see this image I took of my manual quad view configuration:


Is there a way to have just one global Tool shelf, Properties panel and bottom header when I manually create a quad view? I don’t need them in each of the viewports. Just one on each side would be awesome. Is there a way to do this in Blender?

my apologize yes i check it and it has that function …

about the bug now i understand …
i think this gif you mean it reset after your full screen into each default

if you want the behaviour saving views when going out in full view mode i think there is a solution creating preset layout … here’s what i mean


but there is precaution when using this method like
1 rotating navigation it will toggle perspective
2 there is annoying button around the views which can accidentally press
3 im not sure if its possible cycling default view layout and Quad View Layout into one key like Ctrl Q

but maybe double tapping will work for you ctrl q = for Default and ctrl + qq for Quad View

another solution for quick switching is use the pie menu but it needs a custom script sadly blender doesnt have yet function where you can create your own pie menu or context menu in user friendly
like in 3ds max or maya

but if your not fan of pie
and want a hotkey you just need to change the value into :: name of your own custom layout name


Press N and T top of each windows and they are gone + drag all of your headers down so they are not visible.
You can save your Screen Layouts so they are ready next time you open Blender.

Thanks but I already know this. I showed it like this to illustrate that these panels appear in each viewport instead of outside of them. So my question was is there a way to have the two side panels on the sides of the quad view and not in each of the viewports? The same question goes for the bottom header. I want it bellow the bottom two views, not inside of each viewport. Can I do this?

Matsuiko,this is much better! How did you make it stop resetting the views? Can you let me know? Also, can I put the Tool shelf and Properties panel on both sides of the quad view, outside of it?

EDIT: I just found out that there indeed is a problem with quad view function and it is acknowledged! Please check this I hope it gets fixed but it’s been almost an year since this bug was submitted. :frowning:

Drag window corners as you wish and set side panels on the side.

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Matsuiko,this is much better! How did you make it stop resetting the views? Can you let me know? Also, can I put the Tool shelf and Properties panel on both sides of the quad view, outside of it?[/QUOTE]

hi 2nd gif is alternative method so it will not reset the views not default blender quad view
its was created by 4window = 3d view and i just hide all the shelf and toolbar
for properties panel and tool shelf i have no idea sorry

Edit
i still recommend to use default quad view it was much more faster and less to work on
since creating the shortcut function is just one ex. Ctrl + Q you will enter Quad View and if want 1 view CTRL + Q again

While the custom layout is tedious work you need to work on several input editor in order to utilize speed like switching layout ( quad view ) Hkey 1 then switch again to ( default ) Hkey 2 and lastly the full screen mode Hkey3

you need to input them in 3 separate hotkeys

about tool shelf … you can do juhaw suggestion if it will work for you but if you accidentally drag the window of tool shelf … the 3D viewport will appear which is annoying

I must say that in the begining, the quad viewport was something that felt right to have.
But after a while, mainly because in blender, changing the view is so easy, I started to love having only one big viewport (with sometimes a secondary just for the camera view).
Just get use to navigate through the scene with the mouse, and remember that the numpad keys are pretty usefull (specially the [.]numpad key that centers the view on the current selection)
here’s a list of shortcuts