Maya import into Unity, pivot off center

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1

Hi. I have a helicopter, with working blades I made in maya 2011. I use Daefbx to import to Unity. One problem. While in Maya, the copter blade mesh has a pivot exactly in the center (as well as the tail blades). When it's in Unity, the pivot (the thing where you see either arrows (move) circles (rotate) or squares (scale)) it is not where it is in Maya. It is to the left and down, or something like that. Is there a way to fix this in Unity OR Maya? If I try to animate the blades with this problem, of course they go out of their way, and I have to spend the animation every few frames moving them back to "center."

I looked through answers, and I found a similar problem, but the solution DIDN'T Work! It said to click the buttons next to tools : Pivot/Center, Global/Local. It makes it worse.

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are the pivots orientation (that is to say their rotation) coming in the same? Try offsetting the pivot in maya the amount it moves in unity so that when it comes into unity its in the right place.

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4 Answers

4
2

Have you freeze transformed your blades in maya? Freeze transform then delete history. It might work. =)

Thanks for the suggestion, but it did not work.

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3

Hello!

I just had a problem like that: I had an object witha a simple animation, tilting back and forth around its joint’s pivot in Maya. When I exported the first time, its rotation was out of place in Unity. I tried hiting the Local/Global - Pivot/Center buttons, but it wouldn’t help anyway… The animation must be imported and played right immediately in Unity. So, I went back into Maya and tried this:

  • In the viewport options, go to Show/Joints to see the joints in the scene
  • Select the mesh of the object
  • Hold down the “D” key to show the mesh pivot
  • Then, hold down “V” in order to align it with the joints
  • Move the pivot until it’s perfectly aligned with the joint you want
  • Export .fbx again
  • Import in Unity
  • Hit Play to test

It did work here, and I hope this helps you too!

4

Hello!

I just had a problem like that: I had an object witha a simple animation, tilting back and forth around its joint’s pivot in Maya. When I exported the first time, its rotation was out of place in Unity. I tried hiting the Local/Global - Pivot/Center buttons, but it wouldn’t help anyway… The animation must be imported and played right immediately in Unity. So, I went back into Maya and tried this:

  • In the viewport options, go to Show/Joints to see the joints in the scene
  • Select the mesh of the object
  • Hold down the “D” key to show the mesh pivot
  • Then, hold down “V” in order to align it with the joints
  • Move the pivot until it’s perfectly aligned with the joint you want
  • Export .fbx again
  • Import in Unity
  • Hit Play to test

It did work here, and I hope this helps you too!

5

I’ve run into this issue a couple of times and the only solution I’ve found working, after trying a few, is to move the object’s pivot point to the (0,0,0) point in Maya, then export it. That’s what always gets the pivot point centered when porting things into Unity for me - instead of offsetting the pivot point (for whatever reason).

Even after freeze transformations, if the pivot point is perfectly centered in Maya but the object exported is not on (0,0,0), it also offsets the pivot point when the object’s ported into Unity for me :confused: