MAYA: Local Rotation Axes editing?

ENODMI

So I reset the transformations on an object and now it's rotation is all skewed:( I can edit the local rotation by clicking an scrubbing the axis manually when in component selection( F8 ), but once I start to use the channel box to fine tune the rotation, it rotates the object also. I just want the pivot to rotate! Is there a better way to manually edit this? Am I missing something obvious?

mbknielsen

Haven't used Maya for some years but if I remember correctly you can hit the "insert" key to go to edit pivot mode.

hitmanrebel

First you need to go into the component mode. After that hit the question mark. Then when you select the object with the rotation tool it should allow you to fix your problem.

let me know if this helps.

-Adam J Dunn

kodde

Not sure I'm following. You're local rotation axises are not aligned with your object the way you want it?

If so, try rotating and positioning your object the way you want it to be aligned in reference to they parent (world?) coordinate system, never mind the local rotation axises at this point. When your happy with your objects orientation and positioning use the "Freeze Transformations" command, under the Modify menu.

Hope this helps.

I take it you're not new to 3D? But generally it helps not to translate/rotate/scale your object as a whole in a component mode, rather go to object mode instead and use the object. With this mentality you usually don't end with issues like this as often.

ENODMI

Kodde - I think I was too tired to be asking questions last night, sorry for any confusion. Pretty much everything you said is my general solution to a misaligned pivot. I was messing around with the component mode and noticed that I couldn't enter values into the channel box to rotate the axis of the pivot without it rotating the obj as well, but when I grab the gimbal in the viewport and scrub them around it changes those very same values. So lets say Im in component mode and I want to rotate the axis only, not the obj, in the z exactly 45 degrees, is this possible? Where would I enter this value?

Edit: Also, this may not be the most important thing to resolve, Im just digging around in Maya seeing what I can find/learn:)

kodde

ENODMI> What axis are we talking about? A current component axis for your selection? Say you have a bunch of vertices selected and you want to move them according to a specific axis? Is that what we are talking about?

In that case, double click your move tool and use the "Custom axis orientation" feature. You can enter either a vector or use the "Set to Point", "Set to Edge" or "Set to Face" to fetch this vector from another components orientation.

malcolm

I use this script when I want to regenerate the pivot because even in Maya 2011 scale is still not fully supported with pivot set to face, edge, etc.

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/gt-3-point-set-rotation/comments

jfrancis

If I understand the question I think I may have had the same problem. I tried to move a cube's pivot and as an experiment touched the blue 'Q' below the pivot point and rotated the axes. From then on all my future cubes were born with crazy axes.

I searched a good half hour for a solution when I finally saw the move tool settings had the 'Custom axis orientation' radio button selected, and the three boxes below were non-zero.

I zeroed the boxes out and everything was fine again.