The central pane of the user interface that shows the game objects and scenery of a level is called the Design View. By default, a level is displayed using a three-dimensional perspective view. You can specify the following views (called projections) for the game world within the Design View: perspective, top, bottom, right, left, front, and back.
To specify the projection for a view, right-click anywhere within the Design View, select Projection, and then select the view that you want to use. For example, the figure below shows four views of a sample level: perspective, front, top, and right.
The sample level also includes a number of predefined bookmarks, which allow you to switch to one of several saved views quickly; for example, the overhead view, the landing strip, the mansion patio, a lunch scene, a tree chopping scene, and the plaza. To change the view shown in the Design View to one of the bookmark views, click one of the bookmarks in the Bookmarks pane (typically to the right of the Design View). The figure below shows four of the bookmarked views for the sample level.
Within a particular view, you can zoom in, change the camera angle, or move the view, so that you can see any part of the game world, from up close or from far away. The LevelEditor has several modes that let you use the mouse (or other pointing device) to zoom, rotate, and pan your view of the world: Arcball, Maya® Style Trackball, Fly, and Walk. Each of these modes varies in what it can do and how you use it.
Note: The following examples
assume that your Design View is set to the perspective projection view
and that you use the Maya style Trackball mode. To specify this mode,
click the Maya icon () in the
Camera toolbar
at the top of the LevelEditor window.
While in perspective view using the Maya camera, you can zoom in or out of the game world using either of the following techniques:
• Hold down the ALT key down, then drag while pressing and holding the right mouse button (you can drag up or left to zoom out, and you can drag down or right to zoom in)
• Scroll the mouse wheel
The figure below shows four different zoom levels of the Lunch bookmark view within the sample level. The first zoom level is the default bookmark view; each of the other zoom levels shows increasingly more of the world as the camera zooms out.
While in perspective view using the Maya camera, you can rotate the view of the game world and pan the view of the game world. To rotate the world view around the camera, press and hold the ALT key and drag while pressing and holding the left mouse button:
• Dragging left and right rotates the world around a vertical axis.
• Dragging up and down rotates the world up and down around a horizontal axis.
To pan the world view around the camera, press and hold the middle mouse button while dragging up and down (for vertical movement). For horizontal movement, drag left and right.
The figure below shows four different rotation and pan views (with some zoom changes) of the Airfield bookmark within the sample level. The upper-left image shows the default bookmark view of the airfield.