It would be fantastic if we could select Faces/Edges/etc and put the Working Pivot right there in the centre.
After that assigning the Working Pivot's pivot *as* the model's pivot, is a very natural and very absent progression!
E.g. select the 4 bottom of a table's 4 legs. "Working Pivot to Selection Centre" then "Apply Working Pivot as Object Pivot". Done! No more eyeballing it.
Almost every time we buy or comission unrigged 3D assets, the model's pivot is somewhere other than where we want it to be. Cue the process of fiddling with "Affect Pivot Only" until it's about workable.
For example, in blender, it's a 3 step process:
For example in Blender, you:
1-Select the sub elements
2-Shift+S to move the 3D cursor there
3-Ctrl+Shift+C to move the "Origin" to the 3d cursor.
Where the 3D cursor is roughly analogous to the Working Pivot, but more intergrated into the workspace
Trying to accomplish the same thing in 3Ds, I came up with 4 methods (as mentioned in the original thread linked below)
1 - Manually move the pivot point (via Affect Pivot Only) in the ortho views - like an absolute savage!
This isn't always good enough.
2 - A script - such as "Affect Pivot and Center Pivot" on ScriptSpot
My reasoning here is that I've done this hundreds maybe thousands of times over the last decade to fix object positioning, child object positioning, physics centres, weapon handle points, attachment points, phys colliders, etc. And there's no way with Max being 23+ years old that I'm the only one doing this, or that a script is the only option.
According to the accepted solution though at the time of writing this appears to be the "solution".
3 - Manually calculate the values or somehow be able to assign the centre from the Working Pivot?
Again, doesn't make a lot of sense... why would this be the aribtrary line between 3D modelling and CAD?
4 - This contrived, convoluted approach which I suppose, gets the job done:
"Creating a face, optionally detaching it and then snapping the pivot to it's centre."
The best solution should not involve toggling the snap feature whilst dragging to a temporarily constructed face, especially with the Working Pivot having so much untapped potential.
Cheers,
J
P.s. would be great if the Working Pivot would take a bigger role in general.
E.g. being able to snap sub elements both from and to each other.
Examples:
-Perfectly realigning two cylinders end to end, without duping faces and extruding!
-Placing the tip of a bullet in the exact centre point of the working selection (derived from the top rim of the bullet)
-Building concentric anythings.
-Symmetrically snapping mirrored models back together
-Finding the centre AND normal on awkward surfaces like a football model
-Aligning centres of car wheels and car tires
-Separating a single "car glass" object into individual panes with individual centres .. or recombining them and setting the centre point to the exact centre point of the car parent object.
-Aligning car wipers to the motors
-Alinging car doors and trucks/boots to the hinges... perfectly.
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