How to repeat circular modules? (pivot issues)

ScottHoneycutt

I've been struggling throughout this environment project to figure out the best way to step and repeat these circular elements. Any help is appreciated. As you can see above I have pieces of pink floor with a walkway leading to an exit. It repeats. This was working at first because the pivot point was directly in the center and I had the outer edges preserved. I've lost a lot of times wrapping my head around this and need help. The reason I am even doing this is for the texturing. The walkway to the exit needs to have a unique color for each one either in different shaders or bitmaps. In my experience (which is limited) it isn't good to simply throw a giant piece of floor together in the editor as one piece and unwrap it onto one giant UV sheet. There should likely be some texture tiling correct? If I were to place a new piece into the hole (space where the pink floor is missing) here and weld the sides together, then the edges are no longer perfectly up against each other since they would have to move. If I were to fill the hole and not weld the edges, then they would be eyeballed and I would have export each piece individually (not good). I could easily create a new repetition earlier when the pivot was still intact, but it's gone and I can't get it back to where it was.

On the right image I ran into a similar issue. I ended up exporting this giant cylinder outer wall as one object, collapsed a turbosmooth level onto it because I couldn't bake it anymore. Again, the issue is the central pivot is lost so I can't step and repeat smaller pieces to complete it. The small wall piece below with the projection on it ... that one needs major baking so it had to be done individually so I'm planning on simply repeating it in UE4 and eyeballing it since there are bigger objects on the sides of it covering the edges up.

Any words of advice are appreciated. I'm struggled to think through this since day 1 of this project. This is my first time dealing with modular assets in an environment.

Steppenwolf

You can set the pivot to where ever you like in the hirarchy tab (button next to your modify tab). So probably should be at 0,0,0 assuming you started your project from center. You should get the piece on the left with symmetry or mirror then. And for something like on the right you can use a radial array.

ScottHoneycutt

Steppenwolf wrote: »

You can set the pivot to where ever you like in the hirarchy tab (button next to your modify tab). So probably should be at 0,0,0 assuming you started your project from center. You should get the piece on the left with symmetry or mirror then. And for something like on the right you can use a radial array.

The problem is that the pivot is off. It's at 0,0,0 which is slightly off center of the model because it isn't a perfect circle space anymore. which ruins the ability to rotated uniformly around or array. In other words, arraying it will not line it up with the rest of the scene. My biggest question is ... how would you (anyone) model this? Am I doing it wrong?

Millenia

If you're using Max 2015 you can use Select and Place which automatically orients a piece to a surface

Cay

Assuming this is a circular hallway of some sort.. I'd start with a cylinder and take one segment of it as modular piece.. that you can simply repeat by keeping the pivot in the center of the original cylinder and rotating it by x degrees depending on the amount of segments. If you can't fix it and want a perfect cylinder you better start off again, it's not advanced so far anyways. But might be that I don't really get your problem here.
Circular modular pieces are super annoying anyways.. atleast for me, but there really is no point to make it unique, right.

ScottHoneycutt

Thanks for the responses.

@Millenia: I'm glad you mentioned that tool so I could become aware of it.

The issue I was having was needing it to be exact. I could easily find several methods to move the mesh up against another, but only when you have a perfect cylinder, delete portions, leave the pivot and rotate the instances will they be exact. Any other snapping method will have a slight margin of error. The options as it seems were to either start over, or model around it. I did the latter. I simply modeled a crease or indent into the surface on the sides so it visually looks like an extrude inward. This helps the design as well because it mimics the way things may very well have been constructed in real life, sort of like sidewalk slabs placed up against each other. Thanks.

Loutrattitude

I'm not a pro but here what I would do :

If your wall is one mesh, i would select the edge looping the scene, then "create shape from selection". Then, using the Tools>Align>Spacing Tool it would allow me to select the line created previously and repeting the mesh you want around your scene.