How do I centre the pivot onto a mesh?

After importing a lot of my meshes have a pivot that’s very far away from their centre.

Is there a centre pivot command like there is in Maya?

Hey SirYakalot -

Pivots in UE4 are assigned at the location of 0,0,0 in your modeling program. So in Maya move the point on your model where you want the pivot point in UE4 to be to 0,0,0. This will automatically set the pivot correctly in UE4 when the object is imported.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

This is a bit of a problem for us. You see our level, created in Maya, has thousands of components. If we somehow manage to zero out every single one for export, then we’ll have to re-place all of them in UE4. This could take weeks or even months.

is there no other way?

I guess not. thanks anyway though! perhaps a future feature?

Hi SirYakalot,

This may not necessarily help unless you have access to 3Ds Max, but one of our Moderators has made a script for exporting from Max to UE4 and maintaining the mesh pivot and placing the objects in the scene where they were in Max.

It’s worth a look if you’ve got access to Max, but it is an “Unofficial” release that is not supported by Epic’s staff.

I hope this helps, at least a little. :slight_smile:

As for the feature. It has been requested but there is no indication if this will ever be implemented in the engine or a timeline of when if it should it is decided to move forward with it.

Tim

this is really cool. no access to max but we have a pretty great technical artist that may be able to make me a maya version if I bug him enough. If he does I’ll be sure to share with the community.

CENTER PIVOT INTO A MESH

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Thank you for this useful tip! If only there was a way to save that pivot.
It goes away as soon as you select another actor.

right click on the mesh after you moved the pivot with Alt+MiddleMouse → Pivot

Hi, isn’t there any “set pivot as center of geometry” in right click menu in the asset browser, because I really hate to have to work with freelance, thousands of assets with each a different scale (factor of hundred) and almost every time offset from center of the scene when exporting…

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In the Modeling Mode you can use the transform/Edit Pivot tool. There are numerous options for pivot placement.

I already know this tool and use it sometimes, but if the object is 152468; 5767687m away and the pivot at center, it is very long to move the gizmo to the location.

Also, it is terrible and time-consuming to drop every asset on the scene, enter edit mode, move the pivot with an old gizmo (as there is no 3D cursor in unreal) and save.

Wouldn’t it be easier to add a function in the bulk property editor to “set pivot to geometry” that would calculate either the center of mass or geometric center of the object or LOD object / bounding box to avoid heavy calculation.

Also add an option in this bulk property to scale assets by .01 or 100 easily instead of removing the object, finding the fbx location manually and drag and drop it (as the reimport option doesn’t show the import pop-up menu).

Here is an example of something that make my company lose money, we bought those assets, but their fbx seem to have export with offset, I either can re-export the fbx, open them in blender, set origin to geometry, alt+g at center, and export them back in unreal, or drop each of them in the scene, in the modeling tool use the pivot gizmo, save, and remove from the scene, remake a foliage actor and start again to work… god I have others things to do.

Thanks for the extra information. If you are using the pivot tool you should not have to drag the gizmo it should automatically snap to the bounding box of the mesh. If there are instances of that static mesh then they will move based on the new pivot.

If you need to edit the pivot on multiple objects you could create a geometryScript, the current pivot tool will set the pivot to the center of the selected meshes not the individual center. Take a look at this video it might be closer to what you are looking for. UE5 Geometry Script - Y-to-Z-Up and Edit Pivot with an Asset Action - YouTube