Moving Around the Environment
- David Organista
- David Avgikos
DART MAX allows you to create unlimited scenarios, drills, and courses by placing and moving objects in an open 3D world. This is distinctly different than older 2D simulators based on branching videos, so it's important to become comfortable navigating in 3D. This tutorial will introduce you to the controls you’ll use to move around the environment.
Opening MAX Studio
Double click the MAX Studio icon on your Desktop.
Inserting a Vehicle
Once Max Studio loads up, you will see the default "Sandbox" environment loaded in the viewport. I will stick with this default environment.
We will load an object form the library as a reference point. Start by loading a vehicle from the library. The library is found within the side panel as a drop-down option. By default, the side panel opens with "Course Settings."
Click the 3-line icon on the top left corner of the side panel, click on "Library", click on the "Props" folder, and then "Vehicles."
Left click and hold your chosen vehicle, move your cursor to the viewpoint on the left of the side panel and wherever you want to drop the vehicle, release the left-mouse button to drop the vehicle there.
I will use the "Bus" vehicle for this tutorial.
Navigate within the viewport
To look around within the viewport, make sure your cursor is hovering over the viewport. Right mouse click and hold then drag up, down, left or right to look around in that direction.
After looking around, orbit to view the front of the bus. Orbiting will rotate camera while changing position. Left mouse click and hold within the viewport then drag to the left or right until you see only the front of the bus.
To pan up, down, left or right make sure your cursor is within the viewport. Click and hold the center mouse wheel then drag up to move up.
Move forward to get close to the bus and move backwards to get away from the bus. Scroll the mouse wheel up to go forward and scroll down to go backward.
Moving up, down, left or right can also be done with the keyboard shortcuts "E" key to move up, "Q" key to move down, "A" key to move left, and "D" key to move right.
Additionally, moving forward and backward can also be done with the keyboard shortcuts "W" key to move forward, and "S" key to move backward.
You can change the speed of the camera by pressing number keys 1-6 where "1" is very slow and "6" is very fast.
To review the built-in navigation guide within Max Studio, click on "help" within the menu bar at the top of the screen and click on "Navigation Guide." The navigation guide window will appear at the center of your screen. Left click on the top of the navigation window and while holding the left click, you can move the navigation window around your screen.
You can have the navigation guide window open while working with MAX Studio. Click on the “X” on the top right corner of the navigation guide window to close it.
To face towards the back of the bus, we will now combine all the above-mentioned functions.
Adjust the camera speed to moderately slow by pressing the "2" key.
While facing the front of the bus, press and hold the "A" or "D" key to start going either left or right respectively.
While moving, click and hold either mouse button, then drag left or right (opposite to the direction you are moving) to slowly rotate the view (orbit around the bus) until you see the back of the bus.
Adjust your view with the panning or forward/backward options to position the back of the bus directly in the center of the viewport.
To practice the navigation controls, try setting up the camera at different positions and angles relative to the bus.