Camera manipulation problem.

[mikejb]

Please excuse this rough description of what I'm trying to do. I'm struggling to put it into reasonable-sounding words!

Imagine that I have imported a chessboard into Keyshot. I've snapped it flat to the ground. Now I'm moving the camera so that the camera is now directly above the chessboard, facing down towards it (azimuth -90, inclination 90). OK, that's the easy part!

To me the viewer. it looks like the chessboard (and the floor it's sitting on) it directly facing me. Now, how can I make the camera move from left to right (or vice versa) around the chessboard from this position? Note that I don't want to animate, just be able to orbit the camera to seek a good angle for rendering. If I try and move the camera in the normal way (left-click and drag) I can't even get close to the positioning I require. If I drag the mouse left or right it just rotates clockwise/anticlockwise.

I can solve the problem by importing the chessboard so that it has a vertical orientation rather than flat on the ground, but I don't want to do that if I can help it as it makes the lighting a bit more complicated.

Is there anyone who can help?!

[MWo]

If you have the pro license, you can open the geometry view. If you change the view option in the geometry window to orthographic or perspective, you’ll see your camera facing the chessboard.
In the RMB menu you can use change camera position. In the move tool dialog activate “keep view direction” and you can drag the camera wherever you want.


Hope that helps.


Cheers
Marco


PS: written on a cell phone in short form

[mikejb]

Thank you Marco. Sorry for the late reply.