Using the Navigation Control

Control-Navigation.jpg (3342 bytes)

The Navigation Control is used to navigate through your scene.

Your view of the world is as though you are looking through a camera. You can move this camera using the Navigation Control or through mouse navigation.

Clicking on an axis and dragging results in the camera rotating around the Grid's center using the axis selected.

Clicking on one of the planes that represent the XZ or YZ plane and dragging results in navigation along the selected plane.

The YZ plane has three separate navigation control planes. Each plane is used for navigation along the YZ plane, but produces somewhat different results.  Clicking and dragging on the the leftmost plane results in navigation along the YZ plane hovering over the scene. Clicking and dragging on the center plane also results in navigation along the YZ plane hovering over the scene, but moving the mouse left and right results in rotation of the camera about its position. The rightmost plane is identical to the center plane except that instead of hovering over the scene, the camera moves directly towards the object to which it is pointed. This is very useful for zooming in on an object that is located in the center of the camera's view. In orthographic mode, the center plane is not provided and the zoom action does not provide rotation.

Click Button-Walk.gif (977 bytes) to enable navigation walk mode.
Click Button-Fly.gif (376 bytes) to enable navigation fly mode for applicable navigation methods.

Note that in every scene there are in effect two cameras, the Animation Camera which is an object that can be manipulated as any other object, and the Layout Camera. When you are laying out a scene, you are looking at it through the Layout Camera, but when it comes time to view the animation, the animation is viewed through the Animation Camera. This technique allows you to set an animation path for the Animation Camera that will be used to view the animation.