Pivot Position: Center

Hi there! As you may know, I do play a lot around with tranformations at the moment. ^^
Now I'm missing the ability to select the bounding box center of an object or a group as the transformation pivot. When selecting components (vertices, edges, faces, mesh) and have "Selection" set to be the pivot's position I get the center of my selection as a result.
But when I have the object itself selected, well, I get the object's pivot. So far, so good.
Now, when I have multiple objects selected the resulting pivot is the average of the pivot positions of the objects.
Sometimes you want the pivot to be at the center of the bounding box of your selection. So when selecting a single object containing one or multiple meshes, it would be the same as the pivot position when selecting the mesh component of an object and pivot position is set to "selection".
Practically the same goes for multiple object selection. The pivot then would be the same as selecting the mesh components of the objects altogether.
My suggestion would be to integrate that behaviour into the option "Selection" for the pivot positions. And the option "Object" would work as it does now, calculating the average of the object pivot positions. The other method would be to make an extra option "Center", but it would be nearly identical to "Selection".

I don't know how the app works internally, if there is a distinction between the object space bounding box (aligned to local axes) and a world space bounding box (dimensions according to world axes). I think the object space bounding box would suffice and be best for this job. World space bounding boxes are unpredictable as they change all the time.

I haven't found a command to set the object pivot to the center of the bounding box! I think that's a must. I can't snap the pivot to the center by use of the pivot manipulation tool. Normally, when selecting multiple objects and do some "set pivot to object center", it should do that for each object seperately, but I do't know if someone needs an option to set all the pivots to the selection center of the whole group.

I also didn't found a way to manipulate the pivot of a "Objects Group" (Scene explorer). Initially groups have their pivot at the world origin and you can only manipulate the group pivot by moving the objects inside the group. I think that beats the purpose of groups.

This was again some input. I hope it's scrutable.

I haven't found a command to set the object pivot to the center of the bounding box!

There is a visual tool in object mode panel, "Pivot".

I also didn't found a way to manipulate the pivot of a "Objects Group" (Scene explorer).

There is a streamline tool, "Group Pivot".

Thanks for the info! I always think every function of a program is accessible from the main menu bar, so it's the first place I look. And when I don't find something I use the tool search. But the pivot options didn't show up in the search, so I assumed it doesn't exist. I never have the visual tool panel open, so I missed that there are functions for this already. I wonder how much more commands I missed, because they may be well hidden in the depths of the application.

Ok, so I am able to set the pivots to the center. And I now can manipulate group's pivot by hand, but there's still the problem, that I can't set the groups pivot to the center of the selection. The streamline tool won't work with the pivot options in the visual tool panel.

Apart from that, I'm too tired to think about, whether my request for the "Pivot Position" options still makes sense or not.

Keep up the good work!

Hi Vaquero,

Ok, so I am able to set the pivots to the center. And I now can manipulate group's pivot by hand, but there's still the problem, that I can't set the groups pivot to the center of the selection. The streamline tool won't work with the pivot options in the visual tool panel.

The "group pivot" tool will allow you to set the group pivot location, which include setting it to group geometry center or group bounding box center.

If you have set up a shortcut key for the streamline tool "Group pivot", when you press that key, the instant help will show options.

All done.

Check this, Manipulation > Pivot. Some one suggested to put it there.

I placed some instruction for group pivot setup here:- http://voidworld.cmcproductions.co.uk/index.php/topic,460.0.html