A little workflow treasure in max which not many people are aware of!

yiannisk

A great tool that max has.. and not many people use it.. in fact i bet many think it's pointless and useless

so they never noticed that it is now slightly broken but still very much usable and in exactly the same way.
It takes a few extra words to explain how and why use this instead of WP, but it is much easier to use than WP and more flexible. In fact super fast!


I thought everybody was using it.. i mean it is a feature since max 1 ... and when i saw the WP i said bah useless and people were asking why.. i have even mentioned this to other experienced users and they were pleasantly surprised with what they had and why they were not using it this way


OK WHAT IS IT?
It is the screen axis set with transform coord center. (the 3rd option) TRY IT!



SO WHAT?
you got a pivot point right in the center of your screen always there always locked in a 2d plane.
in 2010 it will unfortunately for a while follow your object but when you release the button it will go back where it belongs; to the center of your screen. Until version 9 it was always solid as a rock maybe in 2K8 and 2K9 as well but i think along with the changes in viewport code this got affected and nobody bothered to fix it.. unaware what treasure it really is

WHY?
This practically allows you with only panning or orbiting, to place your pivot point anywhere and any angle you might want. Not by moving the pivot point, but by simply moving around your viewport. You can rotate\scale\translate fast and easily around any center without the hustle of WP having to relocate it every now and then at all. just pan

WHAT CAN I DO WITH IT?
Putting those arms down from T pose to 45 degrees or simulating bone functionality for posing simply by using soft selection.. won't be risky anymore or require anything more than simply go screen with Alt + RMB and place your center accordingly and pretty much anything you can do with WP.

Will Faucher

Yeah I use that all the time. Very useful. In fact, I use it daily.

Eric Chadwick

Cool post.

I use this script for cycling the coordinate centers, plus the companion script "Cycle Coord System" script from Jim Jagger's site. Very handy.

macroScript UseCenterCycle
category:"Tools"
Buttontext:"UseCenterCycle"
tooltip:"Cycle the Coordinate Center"
(
    global centerstate = 1
    
    on execute do
    (    
        case of
        (
            (centerstate == 1): (toolMode.transformCenter()
                               centerstate = 2)
            (centerstate == 2): (toolMode.selectionCenter()
                               centerstate = 3)
            (centerstate == 3): (toolMode.pivotCenter()
                               centerstate = 1)
        )                       
    )
)

yiannisk

ah i was looking for that string

toolMode.transformCenter()


now i will make a nice macro that will automatically with one button change to screen and off center. at least i will try.. haven't done this for quite a while

Thanks Eric


update2:

Here it is. simple but it works!

drag this to your toolbar


toolMode.coordsys #screen
toolMode.transformCenter()


enjoy

Forgetful

Does anyone know if this is possible in Maya?

yiannisk

if you want to set it to the default center of object and view..

create one more button or you can actually make a new floating toolbar\panel and add all three to have them arounf a tiny floating helper in your viewport.


to return to object center use this one.

toolMode.coordsys #view
toolMode.selectionCenter()


or


for the pivot to go to your actual object\s pivot

toolMode.coordsys #view
toolMode.pivotCenter()

if it doesn't seem to work, just reset max and it will.


cheers!

Eric Chadwick

I find it's more helpful to cycle thru both of them, each with a different hotkey. Then I have all the options at my fingertips. I also stripped Jim's coord sys script down to just the ones I use, and in the order I like them (local, parent, screen, world). Makes it so much faster.

Racer445

I've used this before on several occasions. Very handy indeed.

Ghostscape

yeah I use this thing when I'm "posing" high poly pieces/bits all the time.

CodeFather

yeah, I use this very often, also make sure to try it out with 3d snap turned on set to vertex- that way you can scale and rotate from whatever point you want.

sprunghunt

You don't need a script. There's a cycle coordinate center option in the keyboard shortcuts dialog box.. It's called "center point cycle"

dejawolf

holy shit. yeh i was one of those "why the hell would i need that" guys. but now i see it moves around when in the orthos. nice.

hyrumark

Super useful, thanks for sharing. This will beat the heck out of messing around with the working pivot most of the time.

Michael Knubben

Thanks for sharing this! I was one of those people who was unaware of this, but will now use the shit out of it
I always wondered how I could use snap to rotate/scale around points without fucking around with pivots, and now I can!

Mr GetDown

Yeah, big thanks.

Also people who found this helpful will love the script that Bryan Carvett made. It works just like modo's alight to element. It allows you to quickly align the pivot to any edge. Fantastic for hard modelling.

http://bryancavett.com/maxscripts/actionCenters.ms

Junkie_XL

Something must be broken in 2K9, otherwise I'm not understanding what you're trying to say... Can someone do a quickie youtube example?

mikelangelo11

I think it's a great thing which I came to know now.I have never tried this but now onwards I will keep this thing in mind and try to follow whatever being said.I think this is really helpful which everyone should know who all are using max.

Eric Chadwick

Junkie_XL, here's one that shows how the Use Center Flyout works (not by me).
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeVBeRBWKAo[/ame]

In order to use a vertex as your transform center, you have to change the flyout to Transform Coordinate Center. More here in the help file (see the 4th example in the Procedures section).

Junkie_XL

Thanks Eric.

Yes it is broken in 2K9 & 2K8 Also. Pivot point moves around in these later versions making it counter-productive but in max 8 it stays in the center which I luckily still have a copy installed. Surprised 2K8 is broken since I thought that version was very similar to max 9? Learn something new every day. And I've been using max since R2.5

teh polycountz.

CodeFather

EricChadwick, thanks for the script idea ! I combine it with the actionCenter script,
Mr GetDown did recommend , and now it looks more like this:

		global movestate = 1
		
		on execute do
		(	
			case of
			(
				(movestate == 1): (toolmode.coordsys #screen
	                                                                   toolMode.selectionCenter()
                                                                               movestate = 2)
				(movestate == 2): (toolmode.coordsys #view
	                                                                   toolMode.selectionCenter()
						       movestate = 3)
				(movestate == 3): (toolmode.coordsys #screen
	                                                                   toolMode.transformCenter()
					                   movestate = 4)
				(movestate == 4): (toolmode.coordsys #local
	                                                                   toolMode.selectionCenter()
						       movestate = 5)
				(movestate == 5): (macros.run "BCTools" "actionCenterOn"
						       movestate = 1)							   

			)					   
		)

Mr GetDown

I'm a big fat noob when it comes to script knowledge, how do I go about running that CodeFather?

CodeFather

Mr GetDown wrote: »

I'm a big fat noob when it comes to script knowledge, how do I go about running that CodeFather?

First, place this script http://bryancavett.com/maxscripts/actionCenters.ms in max root directory/Scripts.

Start Max, hit F11 and copy-paste the code from my post above, then select all and drag and drop it somewhere on your Toolbar....that's all I recommend you to bind it to a short key (in my case it is Spacebar, but the tilda key is ergonomic enough too) - the script will cycle trough the coordinate systems at every key press. It really saves time!

Cheers!