All the time. Say I have an aileron, flap or other control surface on an 
aircraft. Most of these surfaces ( in planform view) are similar to trapezoids, 
parallelograms, or other irregular surfaces. More importantly however most of 
these shapes have sides which are never parallel to an X or Z axis and are 
often deviant in both axis (or diagonal). The rotation angle for these surface 
are 99% of the time on the diagonal.  So how do I deal with this in Maya vs 
Softimage?

Maya:   I have to create a  set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set 
up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the 
surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select 
and rotate it just to rotate the surface.


Soft:    I select Center, rotate it to the angle I need, select the object and 
rotate.


If I have to change the pivot after the fact:

Maya:   I have to deconstruct part of the hierarchy, rotate the null 
responsible for the rotation angle, and then reconnect the hierarchy so that 
Maya will not adversely rotate the objects underneath the rotation angle.

Soft:      I  select the Center and rotate.

--
Joey Ponthieux
LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)
Mymic Technical Services
NASA Langley Research Center
__________________________________________________
Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 4:56 AM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)

So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much?

That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it 
simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry 
thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset 
transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral  pose)

As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the  
main use cases for Center are?

Thanks.
--
Brent

From: 
softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com<mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com>
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard 
Sanchez
Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38
To: XSI List to post
Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5

So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to 
rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can 
just move it. WTF????


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