Pivot Tool - A Pivot Editor

Pivot Tool is an editor plugin that allows you to modify actors pivot easily, and bake changes to static meshes inside Unreal Editor.

Features:

  • Modify and bake mesh pivot point inside Unreal Editor, useful for reusing existing assets or testing pivot placement of modular meshes.
  • Bake both mesh pivot location and rotation while preserving physics collision and sockets data
  • Bake pivot change to current mesh or duplicated mesh
  • 27 pivot presets for quick and easy pivot setting, organized in 4 groups (center/face/corner/edge) with intuitive UI.
  • Apply pivot preset by actor bounding box or by mesh vertexes.
  • Apply pivot preset temporarily or auto save the change.
  • Ability to apply pivot preset to selected actors as one group or individually
  • Use Vertex Mode to snap pivot point to mesh vertexes while applying pivot preset
  • Save temporary pivot placement (Alt + Middle mouse) with one button click
  • Quickly reset actor pivot offset
  • Copy pivot from one actor and paste into as many actors as selected

Documentation:

Pivot Tool User Guide

>> Marketplace Link](Pivot Tool in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace)

Oh very nice! That’ll save me some time going back and forth between Ue4 and 3dsmax. Here is another idea for your tool:

  • Add a feature that allows you to create procedual/modular skeletal meshes, so one could add joints/bones to a skeletalmesh and bind a static mesh to those bones.

That’s one of the common workflows i still have in 3dsmax when working in ue4.

Yes - Want!

Update screenshots of Pivot Tool 1.0.

Great, please put it on sale immediately on itchi.io
I really need this now!

@Thunderstruck, I’ve submitted Pivot Tool to unreal marketplace, hopefully it’ll be approved soon.
@Burnz, creating procedual mesh and skin binding might be out of scope of the pivot tool, but I’m actually start working on a mesh editing tool which could be used to modify static mesh inside unreal editor.

And thanks HeadClot :slight_smile:

Awesome! I have needed this so many times…

I’d buy this in a heart beat, especially after seeing how well made your instance tool is. Hope it get’s approved soon.

Is it possible to manipulate the pivot in the static mesh editor?

Thanks OptimisticMonkey, Sitrec!

@MatzeOGH, sorry that you can only manipulate the pivot in the level editor viewports, since there’s no easy way to extend the static mesh editor without engine code modification.
Good news is that whatever pivot changes you baked into the static mesh will be reflected inside static mesh editor instantly.

bake_change_in_mesh_editor.gif

I thought as much.
I’ll definitely buy your plugin

Question, not trying to be an asshat or anything… but what makes this different to this tool available already? https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/derin-pivot

@apoisonedgift, I haven’t got the chance to use the asset you mentioned, so I can only tell from the description and video, here’re some differences I noticed:

  • Pivot Tool doesn’t require extended version of Static Mesh Actor, it works with with any actors with valid bounding box, that means you can use Pivot Tool with not only Static Mesh Actors, but also Brush Actors, Skeletal Mesh Actors or Blueprint instances.

  • In Pivot Tool, you can apply 27 pre-defined pivot presets with one mouse button click, or you can move pivot point manually with Alt+Middle mouse drag on transform widget (an engine feature) + “Set” button click.

  • With Pivot Tool, you can bake pivot change into static meshes. That might come in handy when you got assets from artist and found out the mesh pivot is not in where you want.

Sorry that I can’t really make a fair comparision without actually using the other tool.

Here you can find a simple user guide I just wrote:

No worries. The skeletal meshes and blueprint instances is actually a pretty big difference alone! And TBH yours looks a lot friendlier to use anyway :stuck_out_tongue: Was just curious. Thanks for the honesty :slight_smile: Very nice looking tool.

Ill buy this, but one question.

In UE4 you can change the pivot and set the pivot offset and such; but if you make the mesh rotate in game (like a door), it does not use that pivot but the original one.

Does this tool allow it to use the new pivot inside the game?

I’m half tempted to get this but I’d much rather enforce that our modelers actually do their work properly and don’t have pivots somewhere in outer space. This’ll make them go lazy.

What I’d love to see though is a fix for the fbx importer that imports the pivot based on the actual mesh pivot, not the scene origin.

Actor pivot offset in UE4 is an editor only feature, so you can’t use it in game. By baking the pivot offset into static mesh, you can rotate it in game using the new pivot. I made a video to demostrating the difference between origin mesh and baked one:

:slight_smile: Quite true! Nothing beats planning ahead. It’s just that sometimes you dont always have the luxory to have artist around to help.

I could be wrong but as I remeber that’s already been implemented recently in 4.14 or so.

I dont think its fixed in 4.14

Anyway, talking about the topic, ill buy this tool when you release it. Im waiting.
I own other tool from you and its great, and the support that you give is outstanding.

@tukor, thanks! I still haven’t got the official release date on marketplace from epic, hopefully soon.

Meanwhile I have a minor update to make Freeze Rotation optional while baking mesh pivot point: