How do I define a new center for a scene?

odastein

Must be an absurdly basic question, and I suspect that my title isn't clear

Making a scene, every new element appear at coordinates (0,0,0). The problem is that my scene is long away from this "center" apparently defined by the environment. So, I moved every single element that I added to where my scene actually was (something like 400,300,1500).

I assume that there's a simple way to define a new (0,0,0) reference point where everything will appear. How do I do that?

Fishtales

Move your scene so that the part you want is at world centre (0,0,0) and then everything loaded will appear there.

Illidanstorm

You can select everything you want to move and click "Create" > New Group. Then you can move the group to any location.

Richard Haseltine

Iray does seem to have some quirks if it is rendering elements away from the origin, so you may want to apply one of the above suggestions. The Frame camera command can also behave oddly (at least in 4.10) with items distant from the origin. However, if you do want to work with the offset positions rather than move the whole scene there is a way to override the origin when loading content (in x and z, it doesn't allow you to chnage ground level): instead of double-clicking the items in your content pane, hold down alt (opt for Mac) and drag them into the Viewport - you will then see a target icon on the floor which is the spot that will be used in place of the real origin when loading the content on release of the mouse button.

odastein

Thanks for your answers. In fact, I was having problems with rendering, so hopefully that's why. 

Regarding moving the scene : I guess this would have been a good idea at the start, but now I already have plenty of characters, props, etc... placed, and I intend to make several scenes from this basis, so I think I'll try the create new group solution.

 

Thank you again.

odastein

Errr... How do I undo the group I created, once I moved it? "Delete group" was obviously not the correct command....

Richard Haseltine

odastein said:

Errr... How do I undo the group I created, once I moved it? "Delete group" was obviously not the correct command....

Unparent the items - select them all and you can use the Change Parent button in Parameters, but make sure that Parent in Place is checked or they will move.

odastein

Thank you, it worked. However I couldn't find "unparent" in Parameters, so I unparented the objects one by one by right-clicking in "Scene".

Richard Haseltine

I thought there was a button to change the parent (at which you'd select None) but there isn't. A quick way is to select all of the items in the Scene pane, click the first then shift-click the last, then drag them onto an empty area of the Scene pane.