Make Maya pivots more like Max

hmm_rock

In 3ds Max when you have multiple components selected the pivot options become really dynamic, allowing you to move from the center of the selection or individual component pivots when mousing over them, i.e. a multi vert selection can be moved based on the pivot of a single vert in the selection. I realize Maya has the ability to manually set custom pivots in a similar way, but I find the added work of constantly setting the pivots to be tedious and slow. Is there an option in Maya to enable this kind of dynamic behavior? Or even "use last selected pivot" or something?


Thanks for any insight!

throttlekitty

Nothing in vanilla Maya for this, but we could whip up a hotkey script that drops the pivot over the highlighted vertex. Not as fluid as max, but it would at least only be one keypress.

edit: I think last selected should be possible too, but I'm not sure how to go about having that work. Like as a toggle, or keypress or what.

walter

Press D for Moving your pivot.
Additionnal snapping shortcut( X /C / V) working when you move your pivot.

hmm_rock

walter said:

Press D for Moving your pivot.
Additionnal snapping shortcut( X /C / V) working when you move your pivot.

That's not the question asked. I'm very familiar with Maya's custom pivot and snapping options.

throttlekitty

Sorry, I got sidetracked and forgot all about this. Would this work for you? Set up a new hotkey in the editor with this as the command. To use it, have a selection, be hovering over some vertex, and press your key.

string $highlighted[] = `ls -psh`;

vector $highlightedPos = `pointPosition -w $highlighted`;

manipPivot -p ($highlightedPos.x) ($highlightedPos.y) ($highlightedPos.z);

hmm_rock

throttlekitty said:

Sorry, I got sidetracked and forgot all about this. Would this work for you? Set up a new hotkey in the editor with this as the command. To use it, have a selection, be hovering over some vertex, and press your key.

string $highlighted[] = `ls -psh`;

vector $highlightedPos = `pointPosition -w $highlighted`;

manipPivot -p ($highlightedPos.x) ($highlightedPos.y) ($highlightedPos.z);

Hey thanks @thr@throttlekitty I'll try it out!

Klaudio2U

Not really sure what exactly you want here.Is it maybe like when you enable “Pin Pivot Position” in tool settings? This will always keep pivot how you set it until you reset it again.

poopipe

Not really.  Max's system allows for a dynamic origin. 
Eg. You click/drag on a vert and that becomes the origin for transform/snapping purposes. 

Maya can't do it dynamically so moving shit around is a lot less fluid and it makes max users sad.