Interior wall pivots, center on edge or stick to corner vectex?

bitinn

This question has been bugging me for a while, if my interior walls have thickness, should I put the pivot in the middle of an edge? Or should I leave it on vertex and handle it in game instead?

I want to place walls like Sims 4, which appears to guarantee thickness on both sides, I believe that makes designing fitting furnitures easier.

BTW, does Maya have any shortcuts to move pivot to the middle of an edge?

Sajeet

Not sure about the pivot placement, but center the pivot on a line press D and shift+leftclick on the edge

Eric Chadwick

Better to have the dominant wall be on the grid. Usually interiors and exteriors are separate meshes, so exteriors can be culled when inside, and vice versa.

bitinn

@Sajeet Ah thx!

@Eric Chadwick Thx! You mean putting walls on the grid lines, right?

I don't know how The Sims series does it exactly, because they can show both interior and exterior walls, I assume they just use rectangle mesh instead of quads.

McGreed

In this case, I would say that you should place the pivot at the inner walls corner, so the level designer can snap it to other parts as well scale and rotate it to match., without both sides getting offset. However it really depends on the asset. This article would be helpful for you:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130885/creating_modular_game_art_for_fast_.php

bitinn

Thx @McGreed, I read through that article.

My current issues:

• IF I put the pivot on edge/corner, then I have a problem with shared walls. (basically, you will need to distinguish inset and outset walls when designing modular furnitures.)
• IF I put the pivot in the wall (center bottom or somewhere else), then I have a hard time aligning 2nd floor walls with first floor walls. (as Maya snaps to vertex/edge/grid but not pivot.)

Or maybe I shouldn't use cube for walls? Maybe I should use quads? That way I can worry less about pivot...

EDIT:

To answer my own question:

• IF I put the pivot in the wall (center bottom or somewhere else), then I have a hard time aligning 2nd floor walls with first floor walls. (as Maya snaps to vertex/edge/grid but not pivot.)

This can be done by enable Display > Transform Display > Rotate Pivot, it will enable an anchor for other walls to snap to.

Note this setting is on per object basis.