Far Clip Plane... Can you change the default?

[etienne]

Im a Maya newbie, using it to make terrain for games.
However I want to learn the thing inside out, and one thing
I always find is that I always need to set the Far Clip Plane
to 1,000,000 in order to see the objects im working on...

Maybe its because the default sizes for objects is so tiny
that I should just refocus by hitting F, but then why is
the camera so far away from default sized objects?

I dont know if Im making sense but I just want to know
if there is a way to change the permanent Far Clip Plane default, program wide? Ive done one view at a time
by using a script and middle dragging a button but
I have to make one for all 4windows and that seems
to be a little cumbersome...

Anybody?

Thanks:)

Great site BTW:)

Etienne

[jeffd]

Since you are a newbie, I am going to say do yourself a favor and learn MEL. This would be a pretty simple script to write and the best way to learn is by sitting down and plowing through a simple script like this. As you get more into Maya you will find it full of powerful tools, but often lacking in the simple ones. Learning MEL has been a huge help to my productivity as I have built several tools that a rely on daily.

--JeffD

[scotta]

There is a really easy way to permanently change this default, but it involves editing the Maya startup script 'findStartUpCamera.mel'. Open the script and go to the second to the last line. Immediately before the line 'return $foundCamera;' add this line:

camera -e -fcp 1000000 $foundCamera;

(change 1000000 to whatever value you want)
Save the script and source it or restart Maya. Be sure to make a back up of this file since messing with Maya scripts (especially startup scripts) can mess stuff up badly if you don't know what you're doing. There is a less straightforward way to do this without messing with startup scripts that involves a scriptJob that looks for new scene and runs a script to set this on all the cameras in the scene. I've never bothered with that.

[ragtag]

Just make sure that the difference between near and far clipping plane doesn't get to big, such as 0.001 to 1000000. This will cause display errors.

Ragnar

[etienne]

Thanks a lot guys:)

[etienne]

Actually it seems I was able to make a button on
my shelf containing this:

setAttr "perspShape.farClipPlane" 100000;
setAttr "frontShape.farClipPlane" 100000;
setAttr "topShape.farClipPlane" 100000;
setAttr "sideShape.farClipPlane" 100000;

So all I have to do is hit it once when I start a new project