Why is my parent object following the child's rotation? (Instead of the other way around)

So I have a treasure chest, made up of the bottom and then the lid (obviously), and the problem is that the lid’s origin is in the center, so when I try to rotate the lid to close the chest, it rotates from the center and the lid just ends up floating.

To solve this problem, I created an Empty GameObject and placed it on the edge of the chest, where a hinge would theoretically be placed. Then I made the lid a child object of that Empty GameObject hinge… trouble is, when I parent the hinge to the lid, the hinge just adopts the lid’s origin position, rather than the lid adopting the hinge’s origin. This has never happened to me before, I’m pretty confused. I’ll show you what I’m talking about:

This is the chest lid’s origin (not yet a child of the hinge):

[29302-before+parent.png|29302]

Now this is after I make the chest lid a child of the hinge (yes, the hinge origin used to be at the edge of the chest lid):

[29304-after+parent.png|29304]

Why is the child object controlling the parent’s origin??? This has never happened before. The help is much appreciated, and thanks in advance for any answers!

Near the top left of your screenshots, I notice a button which says “Center”. If you click that button, it should say “Pivot”.

Center mode attaches the transform widgets to the center of the object; pivot mode attaches them to the actual origin. This is sometimes very confusing when dealing with meshes, especially if those meshes have unusual pivot points.

Depending on how your objects are set up, seeing pivot mode might be all you need… or there might be more to it. :slight_smile: Try it and let us know.