Add option 'orbit around active'
When selecting a long line of edges or any large part of a mesh while looking at the mesh from a close distance, orbiting becomes difficult, because 'orbit around selection' seems to take the bounding box of the selected mesh and orbits the camera around the center of that bounding box. This way the part of the mesh I'm currently trying to select can 'fly' out of the 3d viewport, when orbiting the viewport camera (MMB on the default keymap)
Since blender can already differentiate between the whole of the selection and the active mesh part, it would make sense to add the option to be able to use the active part as the center of the orbit viewport operation.
19 Comments
it would be a nice addition but right now I use the 3D cursor view lock in such situations and click frequently on wherever I want to focus. It's not that much of a hurdle for me.
* @Caetano Veyssières * there is the option orbit around selection too, which is different from zooming. so you can check both. but he is describing a limitation of the orbit around option with long edges
* @zgorg2004 * I know. That's why I recommend using the 3D cursor lock which doesn't have that limitation. It's one more click on each camera move but it gets the job done.
* @Caetano Veyssières * ok
could be alt+MMB: orbit around active. in the picture I changed the default value to switch to zoom. but Alt constraint view. just to show where another option could be added and so with a shortcut when doing the rotation you can invoke it... {attachment Blender_Preferences_3jpg}
I made this point before and received similar answers. There should however be some setting that allows the focus to be on the active element in edit mode without requiring the additional movement of the 3d cursor when changing active element.
Would be handy in some cases. At the momment, you need to select verts, hit the ` key, and then hover over the "View Selected" from the pie menu.
Just recenter your perspective view with "numpad ."
* @Shimoon * Move hand each time to button for recenter ... And lose zoom and viewport camera position after recenter each time .... Just brilliant solution.
* @IIIFGIII * yeah the numpad <kbd>.</kbd> is really not handy in those situations. I much prefer the 3D cursor.
* @Caetano Veyssières * Maybe, but still " additional action " + hold in head each time that your current selection is go way to far out from viewport so this time it need to place cursor to prevent model jumping somewhere out from view. Not the handiest way to work, especially if it speed modeling.
* @IIIFGIII * not sure I undersood everything you just wrote ("hold in head"?) but overall, I agreed that "it would be a nice addition".
* @Caetano Veyssières * emmmm .. really, if you use only orbit around cursor - you always rotate around it :) Anyway - " hold in head " to replace cursor to orbit around right point each time, still additional action.
* @Shimoon * "numpad ." recenters to the whole selection which doesn't fix the issue, plus when working quickly it just means one more thing to do. The whole point would be to put the center of the orbit camera to the active selection, as I already took the time to tell blender "hey, here's a thing I'm currently interested in" by selecting a mesh part.
I tried to create this shortcut but no effect. should have the same effect that activate it in N panel {attachment cursor_initjpg}
* @IIIFGIII * I still don't get what you mean by "hold in head". I've never seen this expression and in that situation, placing the cursor is just done by a left click. Well, that is, if you use Blender the old and better way 😎.
Yes! In some cases it have sense. Sometimes when I working with large objects ( groundplanes, roads, mountains) cureent way it work is absolutely annoying.
But maybe current orbit around selection can be improved as if true median point of selection is out from viewport - use some median point from only visible part of selection? Orbit around active can be same useless from other side - if you select some loop and zoom in but still rotate around active which is now out from viewport.
Maybe best script is - around active element -> if it out from view - around median for selection -> if it out from view - around median for visible part of selection -> if all selection out from view - around cursor depth test point ?
Works OK for me? I'm using RC2 with Preferences -> Navigation -> Orbit around selection turned on.
It orbits on the median point of the selected geometry. Are you sure you don't have anything selected on the other side of the mesh?
Try double tap the A key to make sure everything's deselected first.
* @ammusionist * Orbit around selection works as it should. I'm talking about an additional option to orbit around the active (highlighted with white) element.