Maya to Blender 2.8 Pivots, Snapping, Aligning, How To ?

Peksio

Hello. I would like to ask you for you help. I used a lot of Maya in previous days but right now I am switching to blender.

I have difficulties with getting used to blender, especially pivots, snapping and aligning. Of course I am googling and doing my own shortcuts but it is still very confusing for me.

Right now I am starting to thing that similar to gizmo, my approach is wrong because I was using maya before.

Let's say, that I have a box that I want to snap with bottom face to the grid in blender. For example in maya I can do this like this.

1 - Box

2- I press D for moving pivot, and V for snapping it to vertexes. And I snap pivot i Z axis to lower vertexes.

3. I press X for grid snap and move box to grid 0,0,0. Done.

How can I accomplish that easiest in blender 2.8 ?

Thanks and Cheers

Snweos

The snapping tool can be located at the bottom of the viewport UI as the magnet icon. (Shortcut is Shift + Tab) Setting it to Increment + Absolute Grid Snap will make the cube snap to the grid.



For setting the pivot point to one of the faces, the quickest way is to select one of the faces then set the "Cursor to Selected" while in Edit Mode (Shift + S, then option 2). Then go back to Object Mode and under the "Object" menu at the bottom of the viewport UI go to "Set Origin" then "Origin to 3D Cursor". (You may also want to right click the "Origin to 3D Cursor" menu and add it to Quick Favourites (Quick Favourites is a context sensitive menu brought up with the "Q" key.)

Dataday

Unfortunately this default process is a bit convoluted, and in my opinion horribly designed when it comes to Blender. It places a big emphasis on the 3D Cursor, which is really annoying to deal with. Maybe the approach will get redesigned in the future (I hope so) but until tweaking the behavior your self or using addons is the best answer when coming from the other applications.

Some addons that help make the process easier (and smarter).
Some examples are:
Modo-Me: https://blendermarket.com/products/modo-me-modo-action-centers-in-blender
Originie: https://blendermarket.com/products/Teleport-the-pivot-with-magic-a-feature-packed-pivot-master-add-on

RN

Here's another way to place an object on the grid, relative to a point. Using the Python Console view, type this and hit Enter:

C.object.location -= C.scene.cursor.location # Subtract the cursor location from the object location.

(This is for 2.80+. If you're on 2.79 then instead of 'cursor.location', use 'C.scene.cursor_location')

Dataday

Good news. In 2.81 there will be an option you can toggle which will allow direct movement of the pivot, slightly similar to maya, without dealing with the 3D cursor.

You can see it in action here: https://youtu.be/eMKST_ddg6s?t=4m14s