Changing the Pivot Point
Have you ever had an issue where an imported mesh had its pivot point out of place? Have you wanted it to be able to changed in the game engine? Well after experiencing the same problem I know the solution and am here to give you a helping hand.
Problem: The pivot point for my object is not where I need it to be. The object it rotating around the pivot point instead of on it.
I ran into this same problem when I had a static mesh of a vehicle that had multiple parts. The vehicle was made in blender and exported in Unreal Engine. When I was creating the blueprint I realized the pivot point for the turret was not in the correct location as I wanted to rotate by the Z-axis and instead it was rotating around the vehicle on the Z instead of in place.
You can see in the image below even though the turret is selected the pivot point is nowhere near it and the video below is the result.
To fix this the pivot point location must be changed. In Unreal Engine 5 this is possible without haviung to to go back into Blender! First we have to enable this option.
We want to go into modeling mode. Well if you look at earlier versions of Unreal 5 and go to the selection tab it is not available.
To enable it go to plugins and turn on Modeling Tools Editor Mode and restart the engine.
NOTE: In Unreal 5.3 these tools are automatically enabled
Once Unreal restarts you can go into modeling mode
Now let’s change the pivot point on the turret. Select the static mesh for the turret and drag it into the scene.
Now that the static mesh is in the scene, go into the modeling tools and with the mesh selected select under transform>pivot
Your transform tool will change shape and you can move it’s position.
When complete hit save Accept!
Now go back into the blueprint of the vehicle and position the piece back to its correct location. Compile and press play!
So if you ever need to change your pivot point in the future and don’t want to go back to blender or the artist here’s a great solution and it’s permenant to this Unreal project!
