- One of the great things about 3ds Max
is its customizability.
We can assign keyboard
and mouse shortcuts to almost any command.
In this example we'll create a custom Hotkey to get
quick access to a command called Zoom Extends All Selected
and it's down here in the lower right corner,
Zoom Extends All Selected.
That command will zoom all of the view ports
to enclose the selected object or objects.
If I select something such as this plant
and click Zoom Extends All Selected, all of the view ports
zoom to enclose or frame that object.
Well there's no keyboard shortcut for that,
so let's create one.
In fact our best option here is to steal
the keyboard shortcut from a similar command
which is called Zoom Extends All.
First, let me show you how this works.
We can get at Zoom Extends All
by going over to the Zoom Extends All Selected button
and notice that it has a little triangle in the lower right.
That indicates that it's a flyout.
There's another set of icons that is invisible.
It's kind of hidden underneath this one
pull down the mouse button and get access to the flyout
with some options.
The icon with the white box is Zoom Extends All.
And when I choose that from the flyout
it displays the icon here and it also commits the command.
All of my view, ports zoomed out
or dallied back in order to enclose all geometry.
So that's Zoom Extends All, it doesn't know anything
about what's currently selected.
It just zooms all view ports to all geometry.
Well, the other command Zoom Extends All Selected
incorporates this functionality
so we can bind the Hotkey to the command
that gives us more flexibility
and we'll never need to deal with
this fussy little flyout again.
I'll go back to Zoom Extends All selected,
click and hold to choose that from the flyout
and it's the icon with the blue box.
And once again, we've zoomed all view ports to
enclose the selected geometry.
I can orbit around here with Alt and Middle mouse button
so we can see that a little better.
So here's the trick.
If I want to zoom all view ports to all geometry
I can just deselect everything
and then use Zoom Extends All Selected.
If nothing's selected that will do the same thing
as Zoom Extends All, and that's helpful.
Zoom Extends All Selected is a two in one command.
It allows me to frame a selection
or if nothing is selected frame all objects in all views.
So to illustrate, I can select nothing, just click
on an empty area, or I can use the command up here
which is Edit, Select None, either way, just select nothing.
And again, click on Zoom Extends All Selected
and we go back to zooming all geometry in all views.
Okay, so what we're going to do is
assign a keyboard shortcut or Hotkey to this command
cause it doesn't currently have one.
So we'll go into the customized menu
and choose Hotkey Editor.
And here we can see a list of all the commands in 3ds Max
and whether they're bound to a Hotkey or not.
So we'll want to actually search for something
and we can search by Hotkey
or by action or command.
Let's search for anything that includes the word zoom.
So with actions selected I'll type in the word zoom
and press Enter and we see here that Zoom Extends All
has a keyboard shortcut.
Zoom Extends All selected, does not.
So I'm going to steal the shortcut from
Zoom Extends All and use it for Zoom Extends All selected.
So first I'll select Zoom Extends All.
And over on the right side we see
the keyboard shortcut displayed
and we have a button that allows us to remove that
or unbind it. So I'll click remove
and then we'll go to Zoom Extends All Selected,
choose that we want to select this field here
that says Press Keys
and then enter in some keyboard commands.
So we'll hold down once again, Control and Shift and Z
once that's in there, we can release all the keyboard keys
and click the assign button.
And now that's done.
Zoom Extends All Selected is bound to Control+Shift+Z or Z.
Since we've changed the keyboard shortcut bindings,
we'll want to save this.
We'll see up here, we've got a field that says Hotkey Set
3ds Max Default Keyset [Unsaved Changes].
I don't want to erase the default key set.
I want to create a new set of keyboard bindings
and we can do that by going over here to the right,
and we've got a little gear icon,
click and hold that down and choose Save As
and we're taken to where our user settings are stored.
It's in my current User, Autodesk, 3ds Max, User Settings
and we're creating a Hotkey Set file.
And we're just going to call this Custom hotkeys
and click save.
And so now we haven't overwritten
the default factory keyboard shortcuts.
Click done to exit out of that and we can test it.
So let's select something.
I'll go ahead and navigate around Alt and Middle mouse to
tumble or orbit Control+ Alt+ Middle mouse to dally forward
and just select something such as that plant
and try out our new keyboard shortcut Control+ Shift+ Z.
And we've just zoomed in all view ports
to the selected object.
And if we want to Zoom Extends All not
Zoom Extends All Selected, then we select nothing
and we can use a keyboard shortcut for that too.
It's control+ D, which is select none.
And once again
use our new keyboard shortcut Shift+ Control+ Z
and we've gone back to Zoom Extends All.
We've zoomed out to all of the geometry in all view ports
and that is how to buy to custom hotkey.