Hi All,

As you might recall, I'm new here and to Bryce 5. Sorry to pester you experienced folks, but I'm getting frustrated with a problem. My current class assignment is to create a child's pull toy. I'm not having trouble creating the objects, but I'm definitely having difficult on placement. My wagon wheels keep going BEHIND the wagon instead of in front of it! Changing camera views, if it's suppose to help, doesn't. What the heck am I doing wrong or not understanding?

Thanks,
Luxx

try top down view. You should only need top, right/left, front/back views in order to place any object. Don't know I've never had this problem, I guees it's a matter of being able to think in 3 dimensions on a two dimensional screen. If you are still having trouble you could note the X,Y,Z coords in the attributes and manually enter the wheel to match where it goes. Other than that I can't think of any other way to place objects except to use the align icons in the edit tab.

I have a long way to go before completing this project, but there's what I've got so far.

I generally move the camera and format the FOV, etc to the place where I want the scene to render, then use the director view to move around for placement. Along with that, remember to color code and name your object groups as this helps a lot when flying around the scene. On some occasions, I select two groups, overlay them upon each other to get the relationship close, then separate out. Also, watch your shadows on the bottom of the workspace. When in mesh view, the mesh will cast a mesh shadow and that helps you see if two objects are close or if one is way off and sized wrong.

Wow - I have a lot to learn yet, but these tips are really going to help - thank you!

You can use the ~,1,2,3,4 keys as a shortcut to the most used views: Director Cam. Free Cam. Top. Left. Right. I use them all the time and fully automatic, without thinking. It's really handy.

Cool, didn't know about the #'s being hot keys... But I'd like to mention that when I create some boolean objects for later use, that I like keeping my initial object at the world center. It makes positioning things relative to each other easier, especially when symmetry is needed. So whatever you have on one side is positioned using the negative value for the other side (when using absolute positioning - that little "A" box floating near the selected item. This comes in handy if you're trying to get things to mesh perfectly.) Also don't forget that some things sometimes still don't look right until you use the Flip command on the scaling pulldown menu.