[solved] Modo - Pivot / Center issue

HoSchu · Jun 2017

Dear polycount people,

hope you are fine and i don't bother you with my tiny issue... but i am kind of frustrated now.
I use Modo 11.03

Here you can see what i would like to do:

What i tried so far:
- moved the pivot in Modo and exported for test
- moved the center point in Modo and exported for test
- moved both in Modo and exported for test

All cases in Unity3D ended up with the same.
The pivot point is still wrong in engine (its the same position as you can see in the image marked by a cirlce)
My aim is to have the pivot at the "x" position.
I would prefer to solve this by modo and not in unity3d with a slopy game object for the pivot.

I would be super happy, if someone can help me out.

Thanks a lot !

Tzur_H · Jun 2017

Not quite sure how this works in Unity, but in Unreal the 0,0,0 in the 3d app will be the pivot point once you import into the engine - if that's the case in Unity, then you need to move your mesh so the X is on the 0,0,0.

Farfarer · Jun 2017

You should just be able to move the centre, that's what will be considered the origin of the mesh...

HoSchu · Jun 2017

Farfarer said:

You should just be able to move the centre, that's what will be considered the origin of the mesh...

Thanks for the reply.
Indeed i can move the points, but no matter which one i drag - the export is always centered in the red circle.
So it seems the center is always resetted to this area, which makes me curious.
Am i doing something wrong ?

Farfarer · Jun 2017

I'm not sure, item centres come through to Unity fine for me. I'll try some testing at lunch and see if I can replicate the issue.

lotet · Jun 2017

Have you tried: center to bounding box & Pivot to bounding box?
Have you tried Zero all under Transform?
Have you tried making a new empty mesh object, placing it where you want the pivot, then copy paste the new polygons into that empty mesh object?

HoSchu · Jun 2017

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ku/n41xbyita7yf.jpg

I hope this image helps a bit to explain the issue in a simple way.
Left the Modo Setup (also not working when i use center instead of pivot)
So in both cases the result in Unity3D is like right shown.

Thats what i have tried so far.
I also copy and pasted the object in a clean empty mesh with no history - same result.

My goal was simply to have a door for a desk, which is able to get open by the player. Therefor i need a pivot for the door at
this position -and- the door needs to be at this world space location.
I know i can eyeball this in engine, but i would like to solve this by Modo.

Thanks a lot for helping guys!
I really appreciate that!

Farfarer · Jun 2017

The pivot will be ignored in FBX. The pivot is simply an offset from the centre around which item rotation and scale will happen in MODO when animating (generally you just leave it at the centre location).

Use the centre for setting the origin of mesh items

Farfarer · Jun 2017

The issue seems to be related to the "Save Lights" and "Save Cameras" options in the MODO FBX export options.

Disabling those makes the item centres work properly.

I'll log this as a bug internally.

Edit: On further investigation, this isn't the case. It's just that there's a root node at world origin and the mesh (and camera/light) is a child of that along with the mesh. The mesh's pivot is in the correct location.

HoSchu · Jun 2017

Farfarer said:

The issue seems to be related to the "Save Lights" and "Save Cameras" options in the MODO FBX export options.

Disabling those makes the item centres work properly.

I'll log this as a bug internally.

Edit: On further investigation, this isn't the case. It's just that there's a root node at world origin and the mesh (and camera/light) is a child of that along with the mesh. The mesh's pivot is in the correct location.

Perfect, this is finally the solution!
Thanks a lot.
Usually i export obj, seems that there is no "light,cam" fix for that. In that export case, it is still wrong.
Just to complete this, i guess you have no clue how to deal with that?

Edit:
I just received feedback from foundry aswell, that they confirmed it as a bug.
Sadly they had no work-around offer for this problem.

Farfarer · Jun 2017

I don't think this is a bug, is just how Unity deals with FBX files that have multiple items in them; it creates a parent/root dummy for the FBX file (because prefabs need to have a single root item) and the items in the FBX file are children of it.

If you just take the mesh out of the prefab (or just expand the prefab in the scene hierarchy and look at the mesh item in it) it's centre is in the correct place.

OBJ doesn't support multiple items (or lights or cameras at all) which is why the vertex positions are in world space - the format simply doesn't support unique origins for mesh items.

HoSchu · Jul 2017

Farfarer said:

I don't think this is a bug, is just how Unity deals with FBX files that have multiple items in them; it creates a parent/root dummy for the FBX file (because prefabs need to have a single root item) and the items in the FBX file are children of it.

If you just take the mesh out of the prefab (or just expand the prefab in the scene hierarchy and look at the mesh item in it) it's centre is in the correct place.

OBJ doesn't support multiple items (or lights or cameras at all) which is why the vertex positions are in world space - the format simply doesn't support unique origins for mesh items.

I can work with the method you mentioned.
At least they said it's now logged as a bug and they will handle it in time - not sure how priorized that is.

Thank you for your help

[solved] Modo - Pivot / Center issue

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