Differences in Viewport Navigation

There are several ways to zoom, pan, and orbit a view in LightWave. LightWave offers keyboard hotkeys to increment in small "bumps" and three little click-and-drag buttons for navigating a viewport (see Figure B.1), and many users use these two methods for viewport navigation exclusively. Maya does not have any analogous function. LightWave also has Ctrl and Alt key options to manipulate a viewport with the mouse, and these options are available in Maya in a very similar way. In LightWave, Ctrl+Alt+LMB is zoom, Shift+Alt+LMB is pan, and Alt+LMB is orbit. For Maya, only the Alt key is used, and the LMB and MMB combinations set the mode: Alt+LMB+MMB is zoom, Alt+MMB is pan, and Alt+LMB is orbit. These mouse actions are the main way to navigate in your Maya 3D viewports, and work in all the other dialog boxes for zooming and panning.

Figure B.1. LightWave's buttons for navigating a viewport.