Navigation

Orbit

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Orbit

Shortcut:

MMB, Numpad2, Numpad4, Numpad6, Numpad8.

Rotate the view around the point of interest by clicking and dragging MMB on the viewport’s area.

RMB cancels the orbit operation.

The Alt key has several effects on orbiting:

• Clicking a point with Alt-MMB will make it the point of interest: it becomes the central point which the view orbits around.

• Holding Alt and then dragging with MMB in a certain direction will align the view to an axis and make it orthographic.

• Dragging with MMB and then holding Alt will perform an orbit while also snapping to the world axes, as well as the diagonals between them.

To change the viewing angle in discrete steps, use Numpad8 and Numpad2 to go up and down, or Numpad4 and Numpad6 for left and right. You can also press Numpad9 to switch to the opposite side of the view (rotates the camera 180° around the Z axis).

See also

• Orbit Style Preference

• Auto-Perspective Preference

Roll

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Roll

Shortcut:

Shift-Numpad4, Shift-Numpad6

Rotate the viewport camera around its viewing direction in 15° discrete steps by default. See the rotation angle preference to configure.

To reset the roll, you can first align the view to the global X axis using Numpad3, then orbit to get back to the regular perspective view.

RMB cancels the roll operation.

Pan

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Pan

Shortcut:

Shift-MMB, Ctrl-Numpad2, Ctrl-Numpad4, Ctrl-Numpad6, Ctrl-Numpad8

Moves the view up, down, left and right. To pan the view, hold down Shift and drag MMB in the 3D Viewport. For discrete steps, use the hotkeys Ctrl-Numpad8, Ctrl-Numpad2, Ctrl-Numpad4 and Ctrl-Numpad6 as with orbiting.

RMB cancels the orbit operation.

Zoom In/Out

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Zoom In/Out

Shortcut:

Ctrl-MMB, Wheel, NumpadPlus, NumpadMinus

Moves the view closer to, or further away from, the point of interest. You can zoom in and out by rolling the Wheel or dragging with Ctrl-MMB. To zoom with discrete steps, use the hotkeys NumpadPlus and NumpadMinus.

Hint

If you get lost in 3D space (which is not uncommon), Frame All and Frame Selected can be used to show the contents of your scene.

RMB cancels the zoom operation.

Zoom Region

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Zoom Region…

Shortcut:

Shift-B

The Zoom Region tool allows you to specify a rectangular region by dragging with LMB. The view will then zoom in on this region.

You can also drag with MMB to zoom out instead.

Dolly View

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Navigation ‣ Dolly View…

Shortcut:

Shift-Ctrl-MMB

In most cases it’s sufficient to zoom the view to get a closer look at something. However, zooming only gets you up to the point of interest and no further. If you hit this point where zooming no longer works, you can instead Dolly by holding Shift-Ctrl and dragging up or down with MMB. This will move the point of interest (and the view along with it).

RMB cancels the dolly operation.

Hint

Dolly changes orthographic views to a perspective projection.

This is done because dolly doesn’t work well with an orthographic projection because moving forwards/backwards with an orthographic projection doesn’t have the effect of zooming.

Frame All

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Frame All

Shortcut:

Home

Changes the view so that you can see all objects.

Frame Selected

Reference

Mode:

All modes

Menu:

View ‣ Frame Selected

Shortcut:

NumpadPeriod

Changes the view so that you can see the selected object(s).