The local rotation widget doesnt seem to work with foliage instances, making it very dificult and time consuming to rotate foliage with any precision.
Is there some setting or plugin i can use to make this happen?
The widget isnt aligning in local space ie local rotation.
Of coarse it looks fine on a zero’d out peice of foliage. but if I’ve placed something on a slope the widget is still in world space and doesnt match the rotation of the peice of foliage.
And switching to local space via the toggle, up where the snapping options are does nothing in the foliage editor.
What problem are you having?
Here’s a static mesh with local rotation working properly.
And heres a foliage instance with local rotation toggled
The first one matches the the rotation of the cube and the second one doesn’t.
In fact the second one’s not world space either and it’s near impossible to use…
I dont understand how this has gone under the radar for so long?
You can always ( in normal mode and foliage mode ), switch rotation context with this button:
EDIT: It does work in foliage mode…
Toggling between localspace and worldspace doesnt work for me in the Foliage editor.
Thats why i ask if theres some setting somewhere that im missing.
Sorry, yes, you did say quite clearly. I don’t understand why it’s working for me and not you…
Do you have 4.26.2?
Yes, I’ve also tested in 4.27 with a clean project and still no luck.
Just here to confirm that it is indeed working just fine in 4.27.0.
What I did notice is that it prompted me to delete the static mesh object to save it to my project as a foliage instanced mesh, if I chose to name it the same. If you’ve ever perhaps, not paid attention and saved one of the default assets by clicking “Yes” with a bad pivot, it could explain this?
In light if it being working for multiple people in multiple engine versions, my solution to you is to just reinstall the engine completely, if you’ve not already tried that. It should just work by default, as it does for the rest of us… This boils down in my eyes to a corrupt asset that got saved over. Back up your projects before you do this.
Did a clean install on a sencond machine, made a blank project, imported a cube from maya, placed down as foliage, exact same results as i have on my old install. Just to be sure we’re on the same page, the gif you’ve shown doesn’t illustrate the problem, because your putting the rotation back to zero before each subsequent rotation. can u make a gif that shows the instance in the foliage editor and rotate it 45 degrees on x then 45 on y then 45 on z, so that the final rotation wil be 45,45,45? Also I found a bug report from a while back that confirms my issue here:
Ahhhh… you’re right. I managed to get the local pivot off center with a bit of fiddling:
Is there a particular thing you’re trying to do, or is it just a foliage problem?
I’m placing down large rock formations along cliff faces on my landscape.
the problem is they need to be tweaked manually so they fit along the ridges etc.
I also would rather not have to use static meshes because they’re less performant and more time consuming to place down.
In a large open world like the one I’m making this is a huge hurdle.
Yes, I hear you. I think it might also be a way of working ( obviously it should work ), as I’ve never noticed it, and have been tweaking foliage for a long time.
I don’t know if the free rotate is any better? I don’t know what it’s called, you know when you put the mouse in the center of the rotate widget, and you can move in all directions at once.
Yeah, I tried that as well and i don’t find it much easier to use.
It’d be nice if I could get some kind of staff response on this or i guess I’m in for many hours of placing rocks lol.
I figure i can place the ridges by hand with static meshes and do the fill with the foliage tool but still it’s less than ideal.
I’m not even sure if that’s an option though for a scene that going to end up with thousands of static meshes, and I’d hate to find out hours in that its killing my performance.
Apart from writing your own tool ( it’s not that bad ), something you can do, is place them all as static meshes and, when you’re done, right click ‘merge actors’ and choose instanced:
The downside is, after that, it’s all one big thing. No going back.
Another possibility is using a tool:
With that, you can make then all an instance, but then convert back to meshes etc.
I might give that tool a try.
Do you know if i can use it to convert/edit foliage instances?
No, because once it’s in the foliage tool, the information is kind of locked away. It just converts back and forth.
Ok, thanks for the help and patience. I’ll try and figure out a good work flow with the tools you’ve listed.