[Add-on] Improved Origin Pie Menu

Hi

I finished my first add-on that provides a bit more complete control of object’s origin and would like to share it. It might be useful for people coming from Maya or Max and missing the functionality to ‘edit pivot’ and also hopefully might make life easier in a few other situations. I hope it’s useful.

GET IMPROVED ORIGIN PIE MENU ADD-ON HERE

https://s1.postimg.org/8znn4b5n67/Improved-_Origin-_Pie-_Menu.png

It replaces origin menu called with alt+ctrl+shift+c

What does it do?

  • Lets you interactively move, rotate and scale the origin of an object. Scaling and rotation works on the values of object’s local transforms. So in other words - you can change the location, rotation and scale values without affecting the objects geometry. It creates a temporary object and moves, rotates and scales it so all the regular functions of grab rotate and scale are available. Like snapping, numerical input, axis constraint and so on.
  • It lets you move origin to top, bottom as well as furthest object point in -X, X, -Y and Y directions for any type of Blender object.
  • It lets you move the origin to any selected element in edit mode. Actually all the operations work in edit mode as well. Some mess up undo history, but at least there is no need to waste time switching between the modes every time.
  • It lets you align object’s local rotation to a custom Transform Orientations (that can be made from elements normal orientation (using ctrl+alt+space or the Transform Orientations section in the n panel). That’s sometimes helpful if you need to restore object’s rotation values after rotation is applied.
  • Lets you copy object’s origin from one object to another (from the active object to all selected). You can chose to copy location, rotation, scale or all.
2 Likes

Origin translation:

Origin rotation migth be usefull when symmetrize is used:

Scaling (I’ll leave it for you to find what that is usefull for :smiley: - I don’t know yet, but why not?..):

Origin To Bottom(+) (I find it very usefull for placing objects with beveled corners in the scene):

Align Origin to custom Transform Orientation:

Copy Origin From Active to Selected:

Nice! I am so use to Maya’s way of quickly adjusting the origin, it was such a pain and slow process to do. This is so much more in line with the other method it is amazing. I started to write a script to be able to do something similar but have no time and this is very much and more what I was hoping for!

Very good tool MartinZ ,
Congratulations and good day.
Thanks a lot, Man! :smiley:

Awesome, looks like a a very useful pie menu and can free up a lot of time

awesome addon! Thanks alot!

That exists? Oh god, what were they thinking?
Good pie menu though (IF assigned a custom shortcut that can actually be pressed).

Thanks.
It wasn’t me who came up with the shortcut, but I have absolutely no trouble using it and frankly do not understand what might be wrong with it. :smiley: I suspect it might be something that just needs a few hours of getting used to.

I’m just not a professional piano player.
Pinky on ctrl, ring finger on shift, middle finger on alt and index finger on c. That actually hurts my hand.
I know that you didn’t come up with this, and since Blender shortcuts are fully customizable it’s really not an issue.

On a related note, the thing I do most frequently as a game artist regarding origins is this:

  • select vertices in edit mode
  • shift s: cursor to selected
  • switch to object mode
  • set origin to 3D cursor

Any chance you might add “set origin to selected vertices” or something like that to your pie menu in the future, so this tedious process can be reduced to just one click in edit mode?
Or is there already a faster way that I am simply not aware of?

Oh, yes, sure, the function is there already. It is in the origin pie menus that come with Blender.

interesting, I’ll have to have a look at what you did :wink:

@MartinZ
Ah I wasn’t aware that that other pie menu addon could be combined with the official one which I am already using. I was sure there were gonna be a whole bunch of conflicts so I never even tried. That’s pretty great. Thanks.

Thank you a lot mr. Ziemys, very handy

I meant it’s the same functionality. I wrote another operator for it so I am not sure if the pie menus that come with Blender use similar code. I don’t like them switching out of edit mode. I see the issue and the reason behind it - editing origin point without leaving edit mode causes problems with undo functionality since there is different undo history for object and edit modes. My operator starts in edit mode, but also switches to object mode to perform some actions and then comes back to edit mode. Undo from edit mode can only undo things possible in edit mode, so it will lead to an unexpected behavior. This is definitely an issue that my menu causes however while it is not very nice, I deliberately choose to leave it as is, because I need to change origin point much more often than to undo the change of it so it seems logical for me to save time and have a smoother experience for most of the time even for the cost of having to switch modes and press undo a few more times in the less frequent case that I actually need undo. While this makes less sense from a programmer’s point of view I think from the perspective of work and productivity it makes much more sense.

It would be interesting to know what other people think of this and things like being unable to remove material slots from edit mode or apply modifiers. Am I the only one annoyed by this?.. I mean come on… it’s a computer - surely it is able to switch modes for me so I don’t have to do it all day long…

I agree. I can’t stand not being able to toggle a layer’s visibility while in edit mode. I have to toggle a layer so often, many times just to make a comparison etc… Talk about a huge pain to stop working in edit mode, go to object mode, toggle a layer to look, toggle the layer back off, then go back into edit mode. All I needed was a reference and sometimes would like to make one quick edit in edit mode, then turn off the layer.

So there was a mistake there that somehow made it override T and N shortcuts. It’s fixed now, but I still cannot get keymaps to behave nicely. I am having trouble dealing with a conflicting keyboard shortcut. I disable conflicting keyboard shortcuts during registration of the add-on, but could not find out how to nicely enable them once again if the add-on is unregistered. If anybody has any experience with this, help would be appreciated.

regarding this what I miss is a “level of selection” as in many other 3d apps: it would cool if there was no edit or object MODE, but just select vertices, edges, faces, volumes(objects), groups, etc… every tool would be active for the selection method used

You’re absolutely right about this, its frustrating and annoying that you cant delete modifiers, materials etc while in edit mode…like what reason? It should be possible and there is no denying why not.

+1 Very sad not even being able to adjust shading without switching to object mode first.

In Object mode, you delete the material from the object completely.
IN Edit mode, you assign/remove assignment to vertex groups only.

If you want to delete the material in Edit mode, then what are you deleting - only the mesh that is selected’s link to the material, or the material across all mesh inside the object? Only that vertex group, or all?