Multiple Pivot Points??? HOW?

[DaForce]

i did something similar to this once....it was a whole bunch of childrens building blocks rolling across a polished wooden floor. The way i did it ( i think ) was to animate the objects pivot point.

You can get to this by going to the Heirachy tab and click on affect pivot point only. I think thats how its doing, its been a long time and i dont have a copy of max infront of me at the me.

If you want i can big up that old scene so that you can have some reference.

<EDIT>
ahh yeah i just remembered another way that i think works, if you use edge snap, and then click on an edge and rotate the object i think it rotates around that edge.....i think

[DaForce]

actually come to think of it now....i think the pivot thing didnt work so i ended up using a couple of dummys.....aarrrgghhh its been too long, try those things i suggested and when i get home i will have a look at the max file and refresh my memory.

[Reality3D]

You can't animate pivot points
http://www.telefonica.net/web/r3d/multiplelinks.max

[robmaxwell]

What you would need to do is parent(link) your box to a series of dummy or point helpers and place these new helpers at the positions where you want the box to rotate.

Basically the box is a child of a series of dummies/point helpers. For instance, the Main Parent would be a dummy(for moving the entire hierarchy around), then side X dummy would be parented to MainParent, side Y dummy parented to side X dummy, then the box parented to Side X dummy(the box's pivot would be aligned to a side also). With this setup you would not set position keyframes on anything except the Main Parent. Everything else would just have rotation keys. So each dummy (which is either directly or indirectly a parent of the box) is acting like additional pivots for the box.

This is how we used to get around Lightwave not having seperate xyz channels(back before LW6). Simply create a null parent for each seperate channel, or in this case pivot point!

This works well for nonuniform scaling from seperate locations on your models as well.

Hope this helps.

[BrandonD]

You can also use multiple XForm modifiers with independant pivots.

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