Is it possible to rotate around what you have selected?

In Cinema 4D for example if you have an object, points, edges or polygons selected when you rotate your view the centre of the selection is the pivot point. I would like to be able to do this MoI. Possible?

Thanks
Nigel

Hi Nigel, there is no way to do this currently in MoI.

That's something that kind of fits in better with a polygon modeler since in a poly modeler your geometry is all made up of little bits of stuff. So that means it is pretty easy for you to make a small sized selection to get a localized rotation point.

In NURBS modeling objects are made up of kind of larger chunks of stuff and broader bigger surfaces and longer curved edges. There is not the same kind of localized little fragmented bits of stuff to select like there is with a poly modeler.

So rotating around the current selection in a NURBS modeler would tend to make it difficult to focus in on a particular area of the model, because your selections would be of larger pieces. Your rotation point would easily be off the current screen when you zoomed in a bit, and when your rotation point is way off of the visible screen it tends to make the view rather hard to control.

I guess at some point in the future I will probably add it in anyway as an option, but I'm not really sure that it will be of the same kind of use as what it would be in a poly modeler.

So anyway, the above is the reason why MoI does not have that ability in it currently.

- Michael

Isnt MoI's viewport reset button doing this????

Hi Burr yeah when you push Reset it will center the view on the selected objects (or on all objects if you do it a second time). So if you rotate immediately after that you will be rotating around the selected objects.

But from what I understood from Nigel's question, I think he's looking for a mode where you rotate around the selected objects all the time, even if you have panned the view off to the side from the initial Reset or something like that. That's a common thing in several polygon modelers.

But it can lead to things like the rotation pivot point being far off to the side of your current view screen.

I think it works better in polygon modelers because it's easier there to select little bits of an object since objects in polygon modelers are made up of all these little fragments, which is kind of different than how NURBS objects are structured.

- Michael

Hi Guys just to add to this, some of the CAD packages I've used including what I'm using now at work have an option to place a view pivot point but never needed to use it, but then again I've always used a Spaceball/Navigator for view navigation, I guess I'd have to use mouse navigation for a while to see if a user pivot point tool would be handy.

Cheers

Michael.
If I correctly understand what the original poster is asking for, then I think it would be a worthwhile addition to MoI.
As you might remember, I use ViaCAD and believe you might also have it at your disposal. ViaCAD has this feature and I find it's very useful as you can concentrate on rotating around a selected object, point, or groups of objects, that don't even have to be physically joined.

Martin.

Thanks for the clarification Michael.

You are correct that this is polygon modeller type behaviour as you often need to tweak points etc to refine your shape and need to spin around your selection to better see what's going on.

Nigel