UE3 - UT3 Resetting the pivot point to the center of a brush?

[WeefBellington]

One problem I've been running across a lot as a beginner in UnrealEd is fixing the pivot points of a mesh. If I've scaled a brush a few times, the pivot point is often way off the center of the brush, making it hard to work with.

The best solution so far I've come up with is to click the arrow button on the UI next to the widgets, which allows manual adjustment of the brush. This seems very clunky though. Is there an easier way to reset the pivot point to the center of the brush? Or, alternatively, is there a better way to adjust the shape of a brush without messing up the pivot point?

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

Scaling brushes is always a bad idea. You should use the geometry tools. (at the top of the left hand side toolbar). You can also move the pivot with that when you unselect all the polys you will move the pivot.

 

[WeefBellington]

I hear you, I'll avoid the non-uniform scaling tool from now on. But is there no tool that lets you reset a brush's center to the average center point of all its vertices? That's pretty standard in 3d modeling programs.

 

[Sjosz]

The BSP tool was never really made for complex/serious modeling, so it tends to be on the basic side in terms of brush manipulation as well. Scaling brushes (uniformly or not) is a really bad practice, and instead you should be using the Geometry Mode tools to manipulate a brush' dimensions.

 

[WeefBellington]

This is all very good advice about using geometry mode instead of scaling, but I still can't figure out how to adjust the pivot to a new location.

On further experimentation, clicking on "Prevent the mouse from being able to move/rotate/scale actors" lets me move the pivot point of a BSP brush, but only temporarily. Once I click off of the brush it resets to its old location.

Right clicking on the brush, and choosing "reset", "move here", "move here (snapped)" and "reset to center of selection" works, but again, when I click of the brush, again, the new pivot location isn't saved. Do I have to somehow save/apply the changes?

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

It's been a while since I've done it but this should work:

Go to the geometry mode, UNselect all the vertices and now move the widget around. It SHOULD only move the pivot now.

 

[WeefBellington]

Are you sure that's not for an older version of UnrealEd? I'm having trouble getting it to work in the UT3 editor.

EDIT: clicking "affect widget only" lets you move the pivot point, but again the changes don't seem to stick after you click off of the brush.

 

[Bi()ha2arD]

No, I'm talking about UT3. I don't have the editor installed atm so I can't test it myself. Sorry.

Edit: what you can try is this: Select ALL the vertices and move them. The pivot should stay in place. So if you move all the vertices around the pivot correctly, it will be in the middle of them again. I'm pretty sure that works. It's not really convenient tho.

 

[WeefBellington]

Hmm, thanks for the idea, but you're right -- shifting all the vertices is not really convenient, and I feel like I'd be likely to mess it up, add lots of extra faces to the mesh, etc.

I guess it's not a huge deal if I can't reset the pivot point, but it seems really strange that there are all those pivot point operations on the right-click menu if none of the trasformations are saved once you click off the brush...

 

[thelastsoda]

brah it should be easy

having the same issue, brought all my stuff in from Maya and all the centers are off. Not sure how to fix it.

 

[thelastsoda]

right click on the mesh, go to pivot, and <to center of object> is one of the selections, but it doesn't seem to change anything, as is ut3 thinks that the location of the pivot is in the center of the mesh already.