Scale, Rotate and Move tool problems.
 

Hey, I've recently taken up Maya for my class. It is the first real 3D program I have used aside from a slight touch on SketchUp5 a while back. I've been doing pretty good with modelling so far, but I've had some slight problems with the tools.
Here's a picture.
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/7200/glitchvg2.jpg
As you can see, the boxes are out of view for scaling, and can only be seen by paning them in view. The extrude tool doesn't even let me see any of them usually. Rotate is also very blown up, and a lot of paning and Ctrl+z is needed for simple rotations.

This problem is very annoying. I have tried to delete the history and have altered the tool's settings (without full understanding however, so I turned them back). Can anyone help me fix this? It's really slowing down my work as I prefer to work at home, than at my class.

Also, here's a proper image of my character so far. It's the second thing I've modelled so far and I would love some good critisism.
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/8...aracteray5.jpg

Hi, ok first off the + and - keys will make your scale tool ect handles larger or smaller to help you get it on the screen.
With regards to the rotate problem ,if you hit F with your object slected it will frame in on that object/face/vert ect and you can rotate around the framed item.
This should help get you started at least.

regards J.S.

Wow, thanks that seems to have fixed everything, thanks heaps. Also, I've been modelling my main features in half, then using mirror gemetry to fill it up and smooth it after. I had a problem with the body recently where no matter what coordinate I mirrored it from, it still mimicked from the wrong side. I fixed this, but not sure how. Is it to do with vertexes or faces not being properly alligned? I've noticed it seems to mirror from the broken points, not just from the very last vertex.

it will mirror from the border edges so if you only have a border on the x axis and mirror on the y then only then you could get some wierd results ect.
The trick is to keep your vertices on the center axis, you can always select the center line of verts and scale them in the x axis to line them up and then snap them to the center by holding down ctrl + X and middle mouse draging acrose the center line.
I personally would not use the mirror geometry funtion as automatic processes do not always do what you intend.Instead i would duplicate the geometry and then in the channel box scale the geometry -1 in the X ,then under mesh hit combine and finally select the center vertices and merge them individually.

Ah, I feel like I'm starting to understand the root of all the programming to this thing like I have with other programs, thanks ^^

As for mirroring, I don't even trust smoothing, as it only adds divisions and goes by its own geometry really. I use this as a quick means to see my model in full because I test render it a lot in my process (weird, but helpful). I understand about duplicated and combining (or merging if it works well) the two halves, and I think I'll leave that for the final product, since this model is going to be pretty detailed and will probably do it again Dx

Thanks for you help also.

Smoothing goes by your geometry, trying to make your mesh all quads whilst dividing the model. Its a pretty common algorithm used on most 3d apps.

If you want to view a "smoothed" version without adding divisions either soften the normals or convert to sub-d's (although depending on the topology if the model it might add some funkey parts to it.

You can merge all the verts at once, select them all then lower the merge dostance to a really low value (if its too low nothing will merge, if its too high verts in the next row so to speak will merge) bit of a balance but a lot faster than selecting the individual pairs.