Changing the pivot point of meshes.

Question

New to Unity and 3d grap$$anonymous$$cs here so bear with me as I try to ask what likley amounts to a really silly question

I have a tank model who's turret I am trying to rotate, however its pivot point is not set correctly so the turret rotation seems off.

I know for transformation you can set the Pivot to center of the mesh or to the actual pivot point, but is it possible to change the pivot point ourselves inside Unity Editor?

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Ben Throop · Jan 17, 2010 at 03:00 AM

T$$anonymous$$s guy wrote an editor script to allow the user to edit an object's pivot location. Currently it's limited to wit$$anonymous$$n the object's bounding box, but he says t$$anonymous$$s is fixable.

Link: http://solvethesystem.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/solving-the-pivot-problem-in-unity/

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abdullah.ahmed · Jan 17, 2010 at 10:19 PM 0

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Awesome. Thanks

cregox · Jun 06, 2012 at 08:22 PM 3

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I hope this script helps someone else: http://unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=PivotManager I tried to simplify that VoxelBoy's original SetPivot for my own understanding of it.

Bunny83 cregox · Jan 20, 2017 at 03:29 AM 0

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New wiki link is:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/PivotManager

hanzala717 · Sep 22, 2017 at 07:40 AM 0

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Thank you Ben Throop awesome answer

Answer 2

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Answer by jashan · Nov 01, 2009 at 10:23 PM

As far as I know, t$$anonymous$$s is not possible wit$$anonymous$$n the editor. It may be possible to do t$$anonymous$$s with scripting and in that case you might be able to write some sort of editor script that does t$$anonymous$$s for you - but in general, I t$$anonymous$$nk the best solution for t$$anonymous$$s is using a modelling tool. Given the smooth asset pipeline in Unity, that's usually "almost as efficient" as if you would be doing it inside Unity itself. And ... given that t$$anonymous$$s is somet$$anonymous$$ng that usually an artist would do, I t$$anonymous$$nk it's even more efficient to do it in the modelling tool (as the artist will usually know how to do it there).

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abdullah.ahmed · Nov 02, 2009 at 03:30 AM 1

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Thanks for the clarification. I currently don't have any 3d modeling knowledge but I should get that soonish.

Answer 3

Answer by Martin Schultz · Nov 03, 2009 at 02:40 PM

It's yet not possible to set the pivot directly in the editor. Only way around is to attach your object to a new gameObject and set the your object's local transform in relation to its new parent so that the pivot gets moved.

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stuyam · May 08, 2015 at 05:11 PM 0

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This worked perfect!

Waltari · Jul 05, 2016 at 07:37 AM 0

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How to do this in practice? Do you have to script or something or can you do it in editor?

ludo6577 · Jan 19, 2017 at 11:59 PM 0

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This should be the accepted answer

Bunny83 ludo6577 · Jan 20, 2017 at 03:28 AM 1

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No it should not for several reasons:

First of all it's not your question but the question of abdullah.ahmed and he decides that Jashans and Ben Throobs answer answers his question.
This answer, even it's of course the most used workaround, does not really solve the problem of moving the pivot point. There are more reasons why you need it at a different position. For example a shader still get the local vertex positions of the original mesh. It's just the MVP matrix which projects the vertices to their final position based on the Transform hierarchy. However if you need proper local coordinates you have to actually change the local positions of the vertices.
Ben Throob and Jashan do provide the proper answers to the actual problem. In short: It's not possible out of the box in Unity; It should be fixed in the modelling tool; Or you can use an editor script to fix it.

So while this answer clearly seems to be more helpful to most people, it's still the question of abdullah.ahmed.

Answer 4

Answer by venkspower · Nov 25, 2011 at 12:35 PM

It is not possible in the editor. Instead set an empty GameObject, and apply a box collider for that. And make that the parent object. And then try to rotate. But set the position of the object correctly. And adjust the scaling size to 1:1:1.

It may probably help you.

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Answer 5

Answer by LifeSizeDeity · Aug 06, 2010 at 06:17 PM

I'm terrible at describing t$$anonymous$$ngs, so I'll just give a code snippet. The long and short of it is, use transform.RotateAround function.

public class RotateAroundObject : MonoBehaviour {

private GameObject torret; private GameObject tankPivot;

private float rotateValue = 0;

Vector3 pivotTransVector;

// Use t$$anonymous$$s for initialization void Start () { torret = GameObject.Find("torret"); tankPivot = GameObject.Find("tankPivot");

 pivotTransVector.x = tankPivot.transform.position.x;
 pivotTransVector.y = tankPivot.transform.position.y;
 pivotTransVector.z = tankPivot.transform.position.z;

// Update is called once per frame void Update () { //Just an incremented value to rotate by rotateValue += Time.deltaTime;

         //T$$anonymous$$s will rotate around the x, you would need to change t$$anonymous$$s
         //to whatever axis the tank follows
 scriptText.transform.RotateAround(pivotTransVector, Vector3.right, rotateValue);

}

}

Hope t$$anonymous$$s helps a little

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CupOfJoe · Aug 18, 2010 at 05:05 PM 0

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RotateAround is the key.

function RotateAround (point : Vector3, axis : Vector3, angle : float) : void

"point" is where your pivot point is. If you're not sure, you can create a small object and drag it to where you want and use the Inspector to get the coordinates. Put the coordinates in your code and delete the object.

Changing the pivot point of meshes.

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