align object pivot to original symmetry plane? (3DS Max)

THE 5

I had a pauldron rotated and attached to a curiass and detached it later on.
The pauldron itself is symmetrical but due to the attaching and detaching the original pivot got lost.



I made some changes to the pauldron and now need to symmetry (modifier) it again.
Rotating the symmetry plane is tedious but kinda works for this scenario since I gladly only rotated the pauldron along the X-axis.
I wouldn't know how to do this by hand if it was rotated freely.

So my question is:
Do you guys know any script/native tool that would let you:
- select a couple of vertices
- calculate the plane the vertices are on
- select a pivot axis and rotate the pivot to be aligned with the planes normal along this axis

So one would just have to select a few vertices along the symmetry seam to retieve the original pivot.

Noors

I believe funky bunnies subobject pivot can do this.
http://www.funkybunnies3d.com/tools.php

The "manual" way i see is to create a triangle, snap its vertices to 3 points along the symmetry axe, and autogrid some object onto the triangle. There you'll have angles you need to retrieve a well oriented pivot. Align pauldront pivot to this object, or parent the pauldron to it and set rotation to 0...

You should try to avoid this situation tho by keeping the original pivot and not resetxform your rotation.

THE 5

Thx Noors!

I meanwhile stumbled upon the script you linked.
Just this moment I was tinkering with deleting the symmetric half and capping the resulting hole. Then I used the script to place a working pivot on the resulting cap-plane which gives me a working pivot whose Z-axis is the symmetry planes normal.
Sadly I could not manage to convert the working pivot to the object pivot, as the symmetry modifier only respects that.

Now your suggestion with autogrid placing a new object on that plane just did the trick! Thanks a lot!


While I usualy try to keep single objects local pivots preserved I sometimes can't seem to avoid it.

I even wrote myself a tiny script that backs-up copies of the selected objects to a new hidden backup layer.
... writing this I come to think:
I could just have digged up a backup of the rotated pauldron and used it's pivot, duh!

The backup script, if anyone is interested.
I recently rewrote it for Max2015, could well be it doesn't work with the old layer manager!

macroScript backupObject
category:"THE5-Tools"
toolTip:"Backup Object"
buttonText:"Backup Object"
(
local backupLayer = LayerManager.getLayerFromName "Backup"
local vItem
local vObjects

if (backupLayer == undefined) do
(
backupLayer = LayerManager.newLayerFromName "Backup"
)

maxOps.cloneNodes $ cloneType:#copy newNodes:&vObjects

for vItem in vObjects do backupLayer.addNode vItem

)