How to permanently change the pivot of a static mesh?

Pedram_Navin · April 2, 2014, 7:00am

Change the Location of your Mesh in your 3D Solution and reimport it.
Alternatively export your mesh from ue4, change the location in your 3D software and reimport.

HoOz · April 2, 2014, 6:47am

Changing the pivot position with middle mouse clicking is momentarily ,is there a way to change it permanently ?

HoOz · April 2, 2014, 7:25am

Is there any coding method to do so ?

Pedram_Navin · April 2, 2014, 6:58pm

I don’t think changing the pivot itself can be done very trivially. However offsetting the mesh might be an option, not entirely sure on the code approach though.

HoOz · April 3, 2014, 6:10am

I’ve read that in UDK this feature was available, hope they’ll add it soon to UE4, thank you

krz9000 · April 3, 2016, 1:25pm

have there been improvements on this front? its kinda ridiculous that i cant manage a pivot in UE4.

MadMojo · April 12, 2016, 12:45pm

This should definitely have been addressed by now. Hopefully it will be very soon.

A_Bishop · July 27, 2016, 10:44am

here nice solution

ALT + MiddleMouse to move the pivot, then Right-click the actor and choose Pivot > Set as Pivot Offset to save it.

anonymous_user_00458bc8 · March 8, 2017, 9:31pm

This is a workaround I do when I don’t want to reimport the static mesh or I need it to be moved for some of the mesh and not all. Make an actor blueprint and drag and drop the static mesh into the Components. Make sure to make it Static as default is Movable. And just move the static mesh in the blueprint so the pivot you want is at origin. Then place the blueprint in the level.

Davlin · April 3, 2017, 10:17am

@ EPIC, you gotta add this little bit of code that will allow the non-game devs to permanently snap the pivot point to the center of an object in editor ! We can do it but only temporarely, so the workaround is a pain in the bottom. People are stuck on this for three years now. Pretty please ?

nrXic · August 3, 2017, 8:15pm

Davlin, have you tried the answer posted below, the one with the video? It shows how to do it permanently in the second half.

I had an issue where the handle for my camera was off in no-man’s land, and I used it to set it right. I’ve closed the map and opened it up again just to confirm that it was permanent, it looks like it is!

anonymous_user_1982d7a3 · January 9, 2018, 2:14pm

Anyone know if there have been any updates to this? Can’t seem to get a pivot point to snap to 0,0,0 on a completely static landscape proxy. There is no option to make it moveable that I know of (aside from moving the tile around in world comp, but pretty sure that doesn’t really apply to this issue), so it’s not possible to offset its position by 1 to account for the fact that you can’t alt + middle mouse button click on any coords that contain 0, which seems like a pretty big flaw in the engine at a very basic level. Very confused by this.

A_Bishop · January 9, 2018, 2:24pm

Can you specify your task?

triff · January 11, 2018, 5:57pm

Awesome, thanks for this! I can now de-offset my brain.

RobMilliken · February 10, 2018, 7:36am

Easier. Right click on actor (be careful where you right click as that part of the object will be ‘center’) and choose Pivot > Set Pivot Offset Here (you also have an option to do this in snapped). Then Pivot > Set as Pivot Offset to save it. This works in version 4.18+.

You might though find it better to not have the situation in the first place when importing. Per: How to import mesh with the pivot point at the same place that was in max - Asset Creation - Unreal Engine Forums - Artemcg comment/picture on Transform Vertex to Absolute, keeping that unchecked puts the pivot point in the proper place for the imports I’ve done.

SouthB2 · February 10, 2018, 5:08pm

I tried this with 4.18. It does not save the pivot. If I select a second object then select the first one the pivot is back at its original position. = Not working.

RobMilliken · February 11, 2018, 6:08am

@SouthBot
I’ll admit, that is odd. I tried again. I took a cube out and intentionally changed the pivot point with alt middle mouse. I then put my mouse over the object (the cube) and right clicked, Selected Pivot | Set as Pivot Offset. I left clicked on another unrelated object then to my cube again and the pivot point was in the place I had moved it to - it appeared to have saved it.

If you try again and it doesn’t help, I’ll try to find some time to make a short video to see if we’re missing something. I find I rarely have to do this with imports anymore as my second paragraph shows, you can get the pivot point in the center if you import properly with the Transform Vertex to Absolute unchecked (I am not sure why it isn’t that way by default - and not sure what checking it does other than mess up the pivot point).

SouthB2 · February 14, 2018, 4:03pm

The problem is that I am importing a model which is a kit that has many buildings in it. Once imported you can select which building you wish to use. So the origin is in the middle of all the buildings. Each single building is still using the origin as it was imported.

llll_Sabre_llll · March 2, 2018, 12:04pm

Here’s an example of the “problem” in my workflow:

I add a number of box brushes. I select them all and make them into a static mesh - let’s call it “SM_FenceSegment”.
Now I wish to permanently move the pivot point and save it, so that every time I add an “SM_FenceSegment” from the content browser and drop it into my level, it will have the correct pivot point position.

There’s no option to move the pivot point in the Static Mesh Editor. (AFAIK!)
I’m not sure this is required functionality, but it would be useful to me as I type this right now

GG-GoraGames · May 8, 2018, 9:26pm

Yes, it do not work for me as well. Just for the Mesh in scene, but new (drop from browser into scene) don’t work.