Plea from a relatively new lover of MoI but a helpless non-coder

Am I the only person using MoI who would really like the orbiting pivot point at any given time to roughly match the working center of the viewed area? I just saw someone on another forum describe that location as the "point of interest." My trouble (and not just mine) happens constantly, when moving to an area that I wish to examine or work on and discovering when I try to orbit the thing in front of me, it flies off-screen because the pivot point is somewhere else for some reason. It feels as if the car keeps driving itself into a ditch, and I have to keep working it back onto the road. I can't think of any modeling situation where I wouldn't want the pivot point to be consistently somewhere in the viewport. Sketchup, Plasticity, 3DS Max, and a few others have exhibited the orbit mode that I'm after. In Blender, there is actually a checkbox in its settings to select automatic depth for orbit, whatever that means - I know that the cursor has no depth assignment unless there are objects to select, but whatever voodoo behavior they concocted feels intuitively spot-on.
At this time, I'm hoping for something that seems more rationally approachable. The cursor can be assigned all three coordinates to orbit as soon as it has something to hover over, right? Failing that, is it possible to simply orbit around any piece of object closest to the center of the viewport? I don't know a lick of coding, but it seems to me that any object (or part of one) in the 3d viewport, provides enough information, even without hovering over it. I know that doesn't solve the completely empty viewport issue, but I'm perfectly happy if that distant grid square that the cursor is sitting over gets selected as the pivot point. If I find myself gazing into empty space like that, I'll probably use a standard reset.
I don't know how any of this could be simulated - script + keystroke or something deeper, more laborious. But I thanks for any input!
Howard

Here's some chatter:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/3d-orbit-around-the-mouse-by-default/idi-p/7856630
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/179289/how-do-i-rotate-my-viewport-around-the-position-of-my-cursor
https://blenderartists.org/t/orbit-around-mouse-cursor/1158420/2
https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/orbit-on-selected/98775

Hi halmi, there are 2 different methods you can use in MOI to set the viewport rotation pivot point.

The first is the "Reset" button on the toolbar at the bottom of the active viewport:



When you click that Reset button, the view will zoom to fit the current selected object and will set the rotation pivot point to the center of the selected objects so your next viewport rotation will pivot around that object. You can push it a second time to fit to the entire model instead of just the selection, and you can right click it to do the "zoom to fit" in all 4 views (Top, Front, Right, and 3D).

The other method is the "Zoom area" button located here:


When you push that, you will pick a point which will become the rotation pivot point, and then a window for an area of interest.

Use this 2nd method if you want to pivot around some specific point on an object like the corner of a box.


re:
> The cursor can be assigned all three coordinates to orbit as soon as it
> has something to hover over, right?

This method would result in the pivot point getting set accidentally on a frequent basis.

- Michael

Hi halmi, a little bit more info:

re:
> I can't think of any modeling situation where I wouldn't want the pivot point to be consistently somewhere in the viewport.

The viewport rotation pivot point is always at the center of the 3D viewport. The eye point for the 3D view is formed starting from the pivot point.

The main things that modify it are the Reset and Zoom area viewport buttons, and panning.

When panning the pivot point shifts so that stuff like this will work:



- Michael

This is what's happening in an unpredictable fashion in my workspace.
When I navigate to something else, I can expect the disappearing polygon scenario half of the time.

Hi halmi,

re:
> This is what's happening in an unpredictable fashion in my workspace.

To avoid that you need to set the rotation pivot point as described above.

When you want to orbit around a particular object, select it and push the "Reset" button.

If you want to work closely on a small area of an object either select an edge or face in that area and push Reset or use the Area zoom button to snap on to a specific point.

In your video the problem is that you're not using either one of those methods.



- Michael

Hi halmi,

you can also set the script for quicker access to reset view:

https://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=11336.2

Mik

Why don't use the icon Rotate ?

Click edge : Reset then Icon rotate

Thanks for the replies - I do use all the tools suggested, but I was hoping to add pivot automation to the mix. If I'm moving around a lot and working on a bunch of details, I become very aware of the extra steps. The area box is a pretty cool tool when I want to jump to a distant area and work on it, but right now I want to simply zoom seamlessly to location and just orbit at will. Using the box or reset usually throws me abruptly to a different position, where I have to make adjustments to return to where I was. And with reset, I have to make sure to deselect anything other than the intended object and select that. And after a few minor movements, I lose that pivot point and have to do it again.
Is it possible for the rotate camera command to select any hovered object as its pivot point? In any case, this is just wish list stuff. I'll try to create a video to illustrate why I would like it so much - but it's not at the top of my to-do list - continuing to design is. Thank you for your patience, Michael.
H

Hi halmi,

re:
> Is it possible for the rotate camera command to select any hovered object as its pivot point?

It's difficult because MoI's view system is designed so that the 3d view is always centered on the pivot point.

If the pivot point would relocate on hover, within the current system the view would be jumping around a lot as you hovered over things.

So doing that would require some pretty substantial changes to allow the pivot point to not necessarily be on the center ray.

- Michael

Ah. That explains it. How about only when the command is initiated? Hovering alone wouldn't be enough. Would that limit the abrupt view shift only to the Moment of Initiation? Or...can the box or reset have the ability to simply center an object in question (selected/hovered?) without zooming in or out?

Hi halmi,

re:
> Would that limit the abrupt view shift only to the Moment of Initiation?

I guess so, it sounds pretty weird though.

You can try setting this up on a keyboard shortcut, it will set the pivot point to a point you pick without doing an area window:

script: /* Set 3D view rotation pivot */ var p = moi.ui.createPointPicker(); if ( p.waitForEvent() && p.event == 'finished' ) { moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').targetpt = p.pt }

- Michael

Thank you so much - I'll check it out, and you may be right...
...and I like it. I tap the shortcut key and click the location, There's a shift, but it's not a huge leap, and I (camera) am still pretty much where I was. I also just I took a dive back into my expired trial of Rhino to see how it was done there. They have a button called "place." Guess what it does? That's right! Except the shortcut is faster (and seems to perform more consistently) in MoI.