Center the pivot to geometry not bounding box

# 1 24-11-2015 , 05:16 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2015

Posts: 1

Center the pivot to geometry not bounding box

Hi all,
I am having an issue finding info on this, first im coming from extensive history with Softimage and find myself having issues with the simplest of tasks in Maya but that might just be my familiarity with SI.
In softimage if i wanted to center a pivot to the geometry center id just click "Move Center to Vertices" and no matter what the objects shape it would be in its absolute center.
In Maya i have tried every possible combination of pivot adjustments i can find and it keeps moving the pivot to the bounding box center and not the object center
An example would be a cube cut in half from the top left to the bottom right.
extracted and filled so each of the two shapes are solid.
now i want to spin each object from their centers.
but my center is located in the middle of the cut in half object (the bounding box)
Please if anyone knows how to move the pivot to the center of the objects geometry without doing it manually (where it wont be exact), please advise.
Take a look at the images below, image 40 is where the pivot is in maya no matter how i try to automatically center it.
image 42 is where i want the center, well in the objects center this is my manual attempt so its off a bit.
Thanks in advance,

Attached Images

Last edited by Mrrazorb; 24-11-2015 at 05:25 AM.

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# 2 24-11-2015 , 03:16 PM

The thin red line
Join Date: Aug 2009

Location: England

Posts: 4,472

modify/centre pivot................dave

Avatar Challenge Winner 2010

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# 3 25-11-2015 , 04:06 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Apr 2012

Posts: 83

i tired it out myself, cutting a cube in half like yours and going Modify-Center Pivot, it doesnt work for me either, deleted history and froze transformations but the pivot stays in the same place as your top image above

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# 4 02-12-2015 , 01:25 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Apr 2012

Posts: 83

i keep coming back to this thread to see if anyone got it, its really bothering me!

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# 5 02-12-2015 , 03:20 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

It depends what you want, the average position of all the vertices is different from the center of the bounding box which is different from the center of mass. The center of mass or center of volume is not a trivial calculation. It doesn't appear that Maya has this built in. Other software packages might.