From the course: 3ds Max 2021 Essential Training

Manipulating objects around a Transform Coordinate Center - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2021 Essential Training

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Manipulating objects around a Transform Coordinate Center

- The center of an object is its pivot point or anchor point. Normally, when we move, rotate, or scale an object, the transforms are calculated relative to the pivot point. We can change that behavior and make it so that, for example, a selection of objects will rotate around a common center. That's accomplished from this button up here in the main toolbar. It's called the Use Transform Coordinate Center flyout, and the tool tip displays the active mode, and the default mode is Pivot Point. This command allows us to set a temporary transform center for a selection. The effects of the transform coordinate center options are easiest to see when the Reference Coordinate System is set to View or World. I'll grab the rotate tool and then drag a selection rectangle around these pieces of furniture. And as soon as I do that, the icon up here changed. It now reads out Use Selection Center. Making a multi-object selection switched me over from Pivot Point Center to Selection Center, and that will happen unless you explicitly choose Mode up here. Once you touch this button, then this automatic behavior shuts off. If I select a single object, like one of these magazines on the table here, then I'm dropped into Use Pivot Point Center. But if I select multiple objects, then we're switched over to Use Selection Center. And these objects here, some of them are groups, and so for example, if I select the sofa just by itself, that's a group but that's also a multiple object selection and it will trigger the Use Selection Center to become active automatically. Let's see what Use Selection Center does. I'll select all those pieces of furniture, and now the rotate gizmo is positioned at the average of all of those objects. So I can rotate, and I'm rotating them all around their common center. Okay, I'll undo that with control z. If we want to rotate each object around its own pivot point, we can go up to that flyout and explicitly choose Use Pivot Point Center, which is the first icon in the column. So that top one is Use Pivot Point, and in that mode, if we rotate, each individual object will rotate around its own pivot. And I'll undo that with control z. And the last option for the tool is the one down at the bottom. It's called Use Reference Coordinates Center. And that mode uses the current reference coordinates system as its point of reference. And if the Reference Coordinate System is set to View, then the rotation is not really going to do what you want in the orthographic viewports. It's just going to place the gizmo at some arbitrary location. But if you choose a different Reference Coordinate System, you can rotate the selection around whatever it is you've chosen. For example, I can choose World as my Reference Coordinate System, and now the rotate gizmo moves to the origin. And in any viewport, we can rotate and orbit all of those selected objects around the world origin. I want to do that. Additionally, if you want, you can choose an arbitrary object as your point of reference. In the Reference Coordinate System pull down, you can choose pick and then just pick any object. Click on something. And now the rotate gizmo is going to be centered on that object's pivot point, and we can orbit around that object instead of the world origin. One last important piece of information, the only Transform Coordinate Center mode that works for animation is pivot point. Selection and Reference modes are great for modeling and layout, but they're not compatible with animation. To animate those types of transforms, you'll need to build a simple hierarchy of parent-child links. That's a basic introduction on how to use the Transform Coordinate Center options to manipulate selections.

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