Vertex snapping static meshes to one another

I’ve been trying for at least half an hour to accomplish this ridiculously simple task. What am I doing wrong? I can’t do either of the two steps needed for this to work:

Changing the pivot

I’ve read that you can change the pivot of an object by holding down V, then dragging the white transform center to the vertex that you want. When I do this however, the pivot goes flying everything except for where I need it to be–not only that but it’s snapping to the vertices of other meshes or the ground or whatnot. I’ve gotten this to work once, only to accidentally click on the mesh again and have the pivot reset. Is there any way to consistently get the pivot where I need it, and to keep it there?

Doing the actual snap

This is just as unreliable as the pivot flying around above. I’ve tried this (and the pivot thing) in different views to no avail.

Ideally I’m looking for something like 3ds Max’s snapping system where you just drag one vert of one object to another vert of another object without messing with pivots and whatnot. Is there equivalent functionality for UE4? I see that there is a plugin, but it was made quite a while ago and I can’t tell if it’s been integrated already or if the current version supports it.

I agree, coming from a 3D package like 3ds max, the pivot offsets are incredibly frustrating. But v should work. When you press V + middle mouse drag on the white sphere, you should see the mesh’s vertex points appear over it and you should be able to snap to those points. Sadly, sometimes, it just refuses to line up with the point you want. In those cases, Alt+MMB drag will move the pivot point by whatever axis you grab it. I sometimes find myself using the orthographic views to line the thing up manually.

I usually set pivots in Maya to bypass this altogether.

As far as getting it to stay:
Once it’s in place, right click on the pivot and choose Pivot >Choose as Pivot Offset. And that should make the change permanent.

Actual Snapping.
By default, ue4’s “snap” is really more of an interval move. So, if you set it to 500 and activate the “snapping” (It’s the grid icon on the top right of the viewport), the objects will move in increments of 500 units from wherever they are. This sucks if you want it to snap to somewhere specific. What I do is I make sure snapping is on before I drag things into the level and they will drop with their pivot on the closest multiple of whatever units you’ve set it to. So if you drop it near 1005 units on the x axis and have the snap set to 100, it will place the object so that the pivot lands on 1000. It works alright if your pivot is already set properly (Which usually means you’ve set it however you want on your 3D modeling app).

Actual snapping to objects is done through V+LMB drag on the white sphere on the pivot. (I know, I’m sorry.) This will snap the pivot to whichever vertex you choose.

Generally, set the pivots beforehand, have grid snapping on before you drop anything into the level, and go to their feature request page and ask them to make a check box for snapping to vertices.

Good luck!

1 Like

I just came back to this question and realized that apparently I had accidentally made a downvote, and can’t cancel it anymore because it’s been over a day. Deep apologies for that because this post was really helpful!

hahaha. No worries. Though, I was wondering about that.

To solve such problems, I created a plugin. You can see here UE4 UE5 Unreal Engine 4 Unreal Engine 5 Vertex Snapping. Snapping helper plugin - YouTube