Input Preferences

The 3D Mouse provides two main navigation styles:

• Camera Walkthrough - Moving the puck moves the viewport's camera as though you were moving the camera itself. Pushing the puck to the right moves the camera to the right, and thus the scene appears to move to the left, similarly to playing a first-person video game.

• Object Orbit - Moving the puck moves the viewport's camera so that you seem to be moving the item in the view. Pushing the puck to the right moves the camera to the left, thus making it appear that the object is moving to the right. Twisting the puck rotates the camera around the object, as though the object was spinning around in front of you. The center of rotation is determined by the blue dot, called Auto Rotation Center, which appears at the center of the viewport when you start manipulating the puck. If the item under the dot fills more than 80% of the view, the blue dot represents a point on the surface of the model that is tracked in 3D space until you release the puck, at which point the blue dot returns to the center of the viewport when you touch the puck again). If less than 80% of the view is filled with the object, the object's bounding box center is used as the center of rotation.

The following options are available to set for orthographic view.

• World Space - The translation axes of the puck move in world space, irrespective of the current orthographic view. Thus, pushing left or right on the puck always moves on the world X axis, even if the orthographic view is showing the left or right (and in which case you won't appear to see any movement, since you're moving perpendicular to the view).  Best used/demonstrated with the Model Quad view.

• Screen Space - The translation axes move relative to the current view: x20left/right moves on the horizontal axis, and up/down moves in the vertical axis. Pushing in/out changes the view's zoom.

• Screen Space (Swap Y and Z Axes) - Pushing the puck left/right moves left/right just like in Screen Space mode, but pushing the puck forward/backward moves the screen up/down, while pulling up/down zooms in and out. Basically, the Y and Z axes are swapped.

When enabled, holding down Alt toggles between the two navigation styles. Similarly, holding down Shift and Ctrl toggle between the two Orthographic View Styles.

This is a global speed modifier, a scaling value applied to the 3D mouse's input values to make the mouse move faster or slower. This is not capped to 100%, so you can set it higher if you want it to go faster.

This option switches the Y axis with the Z axis, useful for people who think of the screen as lying on a desk (usually CAD/architecture users), as opposed to those who think of the screen as vertical (usually video-centric users).

When enabled, the 3D mouse movement applies to whichever viewport the mouse cursor is currently over. If disabled, you must first interact with the viewport by clicking in it with the mouse or by rolling the mouse wheel, before the 3D mouse switches focus. This is indicated by the orange color of the Thumb. In both cases, if the mouse is not over a view that can accept 3D mouse input, the last view that can accept such input continues to get input.

When enabled, a blue dot is displayed to indicate the orbit rotation center.

Maintains a level horizon when navigating (this is different than just disabling the Z axis rotation).

Only the axis that has the most force applied to it is used, all others remain idle. This is useful if you only want to move on one axis at a time, but don't want to have to keep toggling the Lock buttons.

A simple script that toggles the state of all of the Invert buttons. There are similar scripts (and buttons) to lock all the translation or rotation axes.

The 3D mouse has a range of 0-100%. Thresholds allow you to require a certain amount of force on an axis before it registers as movement. If set to 10%, you need to push the mouse harder before you see any movement, at which point the remaining 10%-100% range is expanded to be the new 0%-100% range.

Tip:  If you're a new user, this may help to avoid accidentally moving on multiple axes at once, and can be thought of as training wheels. However, it also can make the puck feel unresponsive due to the extra force required to see any movement, and may keep you from becoming proficient at controlling multiple axes at once. Mostly, you should leave these at 0%.

Per-axis speeds, should you want to change the speed of an individual axis. The global speed control is applied on top of these values.

Globally scales the non-linear exponents in the same way that the global speed scales all speeds. So, it provides an easy, high-level way to further adjust all of the exponents at once.

If you're coming to Modo from another 3D application, you can adjust the mouse navigation controls to mimic those of the chosen application with this option. A variety of options are available representing a number of popular 3D programs.

This option determines how Modo interprets input commands. You can choose either a Mouse or Tablet as the main form of input. Tablets typically use an absolute positioning based on a stylus' position on the tablet surface, whereas a mouse uses a relative position based only on the initial position of the cursor.

Note:  If you're using a tablet with relative positioning, you should set this option to Mouse.

When enabled, modifier keys can trigger chording. When disabled, only mouse buttons can trigger chording. Chording is the use of multiple mouse buttons simultaneously.

Note:  Chording has been widely recognized as a key contributor to carpal tunnel syndrome and other repeated stress injuries. The Foundry recommends that you avoid chording to prevent unnecessary muscle strain.

When enabled, pressing Enter on the numeric keypad functions the same way as pressing Tab does, by advancing the cursor to the next logical data field.

When this option is disabled, there is a slight delay to the opening of pie menus. When enabled, the menus open immediately. If you are not accustomed to pie menus, the delay may be helpful in eliminating menus from popping open unexpectedly when you press a key accidentally.

This option forces new dialogs to always open at the current mouse position, for instance the Save As and Open file dialogs. When disabled, dialogs open in the same position as the last open dialog.

Defined in seconds, this option determines the length of time before the tooltip info display opens when hovering the mouse pointer over a button or function of Modo. The default value is 0.8 seconds.

This percentage value determines the speed at which Modo zooms in or out when using a mouse's scroll wheel. Higher values zoom faster, while lower values zoom more slowly.

When this option is enabled, zooming in any OpenGL viewport with the mouse scroll wheel center the zoom based on the mouse's position over the viewport, when disabled, the mouse's position is disregarded and the viewport zooms based on its center.

This option inverts the zooming behavior of the mouse wheel. Pushing forward on the wheel pushes out, instead of in.

This option determines the directional behavior when hauling in a 3D viewport when zooming. The options are Left to Right, Right to Left, Bottom to Top, and Top to Bottom.

Viewport Rotation

This options determines the default navigation rotational type. Trackball style navigation is a common way to rotate the view of a scene, as if the viewport itself was a giant trackball, allowing multiple axes rotation based on the mouse's viewport position. Disabling this option limits viewport rotations to only two axes. You can override this setting for each individual viewport separately.

When enabled, this option disables an individual viewport's ability to override the Viewport Rotation preference setting, locking all viewport rotation options to the same preference setting.

This option determines the behavior of lasso or paint selection modes when selecting components in the OpenGL viewports. The following options are available:

• Frontface & Wireframe - Default behavior is only forward-facing polygons are selected, except when in Wireframe mode, where both the front and back-facing polygons are selected.

• Frontface & Backface - Default behavior is front and back faces are always selected regardless of viewport style.

• Frontface only - Default behavior is to select only front-facing geometry regardless of viewport style.

• Always Raycast - Paint selection does occlusion testing for hit element regardless of shading style. Wireframe view is treated as Solid shading view. If the hit element is occluded by polygon on wireframe view, it is not selected.

• No Raycast - Paint selection does not do occlusion testing for hit element regardless of shading style. Shaded view is treated as Wireframe shading view. Even if the hit element is occluded by polygon on Shaded view, it is not selected.

When this option is enabled, you can paint select any polygon tagged with a material that is defined as Double Sided from their back side. When disabled, you cannot paint select polygons from the back.

This value determines the area around a selectable (pre-highlighted) element where clicking the mouse selects it. This value is determined as screen size pixel scale.

This is for controlling the multi component selection mode used in tools such as Element Move. When the cursor is close to the corner of a polygon, the distances from the cursor to vertex and the connected edges are very close. The Point Selection Priority option gives priority to point selection over edge selection.

The typical behavior of polygon selection in Modo is to select what is visible to the user. This means that when lasso selecting a sphere in Shaded display style, only forward-facing polygons are selected, but while in Wireframe display style, the same selection selects both forward and backward-facing polygons (as the rear-facing polygons are now visible to the user). When Ignore Shading Style is enabled, Modo's selection mode works identically regardless of the viewport display style.

You can choose your preferred measurement units system based on several options. Once set, this is the measurement input method Modo uses for all numerical input values.

• SI - The International System of Units (abbreviated 'SI') is the modern form of the metric system, complies to universal base units.

• Metric - A universal system of measurement based on powers of 10 -millimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer.

• English - A historical measurement system based on Imperial Units -mils, inch, foot, yard and mile

• Game Units - An arbitrary unit of measurement (defined by the Meters per Game Unit setting).

• Unitless - An arbitrary decimalized unit of measurement based on cubic meters. 1 unit = 1m.

This option is dependent on the Unit System and determines the default unit used when no unit is specified.

When the English unit system is selected, the Inch Scale Cutoff determines the cutoff where Modo displays inches as feet and inches. For example, when set to the default 36, 27 inches display as 27", but 42 inches display as 3' 6".

When utilizing the arbitrary Game Units system, use this value to determine the scale of a single unit. This allows you to work with even whole numbers. So if a 1 m equivalent is really 1.375 real world meters in Modo, you can enter 1.375 here and then specify units normally in the numerical input fields.

This option determines the default force unit Modo uses when specifying dynamic force.

You can specify alternate units of force to work with using this control. Modo defaults to the selected unit when a unit is not specified in the related input field.

This option determines the default Acceleration unit Modo uses when specifying acceleration.

You can specify alternate units of Acceleration to work with using this control. Modo defaults to the selected unit when a unit is not specified in the related input field.

This option determines the default speed unit Modo uses when specifying speed (distance traveled over time).

You can specify alternate units of speed to work with, using this control. Modo defaults to the selected unit when a unit is not specified in the related input field.

This option determines the default unit of mass Modo uses when specifying an object's mass.

You can specify alternate units of mass to work with, using this control. Modo defaults to the selected unit when a unit is not specified in the related input field.

This option determines the default light unit Modo uses when specifying a light's brightness.

• Radiometric - Measurement of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes visible light, defined by power of radiation.

• Photometric - Measurement of brightness of light as perceived by the human eye, defined by luminous intensity.

Determines the color unit system used for specifying colors in Modo.

• Floating Point - Determines colors based on decimals, uses 0-1 range and beyond for HDR colors.

• Percentage - Determines colors based on percentages, uses 0%-100% range.

• Integer - Determines colors based on 8bit value scale, uses 0-255 range (2 to 8th power = 256 values).

• Hexadecimal - A computer numerical system similar to binary, represented by 16 characters. 2bit Hex produces 256 values, similar to Integer color units. Widely used in specifying color on the web, uses 00.00.00-ff.ff.ff range.

This option determines surfacing and material value units. You can specify values as a percentage 0%-100% or as a float value 0.0-1.0.

This option controls how mouse input is converted through the Work Plane, into 3D coordinates. You can choose from the following options:

• None - No coordinate rounding is done. Every mouse move gives unclamped coordinates, typically with lots of decimals. This option is the raw 2D to 3D transform. This is useful for working freehand.

• Normal - This option attempts to give clean, round coordinates, based on your view transform. As the mouse moves, you can see values in your current unit system display in the information tab. The step size gets smaller or larger as you zoom in or out. You may need to move the mouse cursor two or three pixels to see values update.

• Fine - This option is similar to Normal, but optimizes for closer to one step of coordinate rounding from one pixel of mouse movement. This gives you finer grained input, but can be difficult to hit exact values.

• Fixed - This option uses the Fixed Increment preference to put a lower limit on both coordinate rounding and the grid. If you set the fixed increment to 10 mm, that means the grid never gets finer than 10 mm, and all input is rounded to the nearest 10 mm even at high zoom. When you zoom out, however, the grid shows larger values but the step size always remains a multiple of the fixed increment.

• Forced Fixed - This option is similar to Fixed, but forces the size of the grid and the input step to match the increment exactly, no matter the zoom level.

When the Coordinate Rounding is set to either of the fixed options, this value determines the fixed coordinate rounding grid.

Work Plane and Grid

An option for selecting which type of grid to display in the viewport. The following options are available:

• Fixed - The grid is displayed in regular intervals.

• Dynamic - The grid is dynamic depending on the zoom level, a small display in the lower right corner gives you the real world equivalent measurements for each square unit.

This option is enabled when the Grid Type is set to Fixed, allowing you to specify the size of the grid squares displayed in the viewport.

Note:  When zooming out, grid lines can merge together when they become too small. When this occurs, Modo converts fixed grids to dynamic grids.

Alignment

When the Preferred Plane Bias option is set above 0%, you can choose a preferred Work Plane. Based on the bias amount, Modo attempts to keep the work plane positioned at the preferred plane determined by its two major axes.

When working with the Work Plane, Modo tries to keep the plane perpendicular to the viewport window when navigating and rotating the view. Increasing the Plane Bias option increases Modo's favor of the preferred plane. Setting a very high value means Modo almost always favors the preferred plane.

You can lock the Work Plane to a specific plane-facing direction by enabling this option. Once fixed, rotating the viewport does not affect the position or angle of the Work Plane.

When the Work Plane is locked, you can additionally set an offset from the origin, providing accurate control over the position and placement of the Work Plane when used as a construction plane.