Center Pivot Adjustment for Turntable

[mkultral25]

I am trying to render a turntable of a model that has two models. one of which hangs over the turntable base. Normally, I would render the turntable in Maya so I can place the center pivot at the center of the base, not the center pivot of the entire scene. In Zbrush, it seems as though the program always takes all of the subtools and places the center pivot smack dead in the middle. This gives a wonky turntable effect, where some objects turn outside of the document. Imagine turning a lazy suzane with the center pivot towards the outside, it doesn’t spin correctly, evenly and within frame.

Is there a way to tell zbrush to spin the turntable from the base, rather than the whole scene?

[system]

Was there ever an answer to this question? It’s something that really bothers me, i want my turntable’s ‘podium’ to be the center

As you can see here, with all the subtools etc. it offsets the center
Is there a way i can choose a centerpoint for the camera?

[system]

hey it is easy, just go to movie/modifiers and under the spin cycles slider you will find the “Scrn” button.
it will set the pivot to the center of the screen so you can place there whatever part of the model you wish to be the center point.

[dargelos]

I haven’t tried it so I don’t know if it would work but I woukd try this:
make a big sphere that hold all the scene inside centered in the place you want to be the center of your rotation.
to make it invisible i would try to flip normal in the display properties and fill it with the color of your background with a flat material…
again , not sure if it will work but i would give it a try.

edited:… sorry ,I thought that turning the visibility off would ignore the sphere but I dont think it does… so you dont need to do any of that.

[dargelos]

ok , I am at the PC now and … Maybe I am not understanding the problem right, it looks like the rotation is always taking place from the center of the space. not relative to the subtools…
if your podium is offset just move all the subtool…with transpose master …

[dargelos]

I didnt have any problem… You just need to move all the subtools so the center of your podium is on the center of the space. you can find that point activating the floor. Its the origin of the 3 axes

[system]

Turning on the screen button seemed to affect nothing. My scene is framed around a (perfectly) circular subtool, so in theory if the whole thing is in shot in the first frame it should be in shot for the whole movie, but it’s not.

Also about moving all the subtools, other than being time consuming, there are certain times (Like for example now) when the subtools average centerpoint isn’t what you want it to spin around, my scene isn’t averaged to the center, because my character isn’t posed in a symmetrical way, also there are other subtools in the scene like the rocks which throw off the center point,

[dargelos]

Your podium can be a perfect cylinder but its center isn’t in the space center … Moving all sub tools can be done with transpose master it’s just one action… I might be wrong but I tried with several subtools and placed them in different places and the turntable was always spinning around the space center

[dargelos]

Is your circular podium center exactly on the space center?

[dargelos]

Just forget about the subtools average … That’s what got me confused first . Try this experiment. Use any 3d object, make 3 or 4 duplicates. Offset them in any direction . Make turntables with the floor activated so you can see the center point. Keep moving them. Do you see any change I the rotation axis? in my copy of zbrush they always spin around the same point
I think the turntable axis can be set to x y z and it can be model or screen… In the movie subpalette. But the center is always the Same!

[system]

Ah, yeh it does circle around the grid you’re right. hm, well it’s a bit annoying i’ll have to move everything to the center. because of the pose for my character the grid is actually perpendicular to the base, and if i move it so the floor is in the center, the floor automatically jumps to the lowest point (Which as i’m trying to rotate around the Z axis is annoying)
Anyway, i’ll work it out, it’s just a little frustrating, especially because my fibermesh grass keeps going weird when i merge subtools (so i can move them)

[dargelos]

Ah, yeh it does circle around the grid you’re right. hm, well it’s a bit annoying i’ll have to move everything to the center. because of the pose for my character the grid is actually perpendicular to the base, and if i move it so the floor is in the center, the floor automatically jumps to the lowest point (Which as i’m trying to rotate around the Z axis is annoying)
Anyway, i’ll work it out, it’s just a little frustrating, especially because my fibermesh grass keeps going weird when i merge subtools (so i can move them)

It doesn’t have to be that tedious… If you can use transpose master you just have to reposition one time for all the tools and then maybe fiber mesh by eye. But since they are random grass leaves they can admit a little offset…

[system]

actually i merged them into 4 subobjects (facial features, main character, environment, fibermesh)
moved them all by eye then seperated again, worked fine

By the way, you can move fibermesh with transpose, you just go into the automask options and turn off ‘automask fibermesh’ then it moves like normal subtools
(but i ended up redoing the grass for the final render anyway:p)
Thanks for everyone’s help, every time i face a problem like this head on rather than find a workaround i find my knowledge of this program goes up so much.