DuPivot is a simple Maya plugin to easily set the pivot of objects to specific locations.

It sets the pivot of the current selection, and can:

• set the pivot to the barycenter of all child meshes and nurbs;
• set the pivot to the approximate center of mass of all child meshes;
• set the pivot according to the bounding box (center, top or bottom).

Using the barycenter is very fast (measured to take approximately 1 second per million of polygons).
Computing the center of mass is a bit slower.

The plugin comes with a new shelf, and adds a new centerPivot Mel/Python command (with some optional parameters).

Installation

• Download the latest release.
• Unzip all files to a location of your choice. It may be a shared folder.
• Drag and drop (or run) the DuPivot_installer.py script in Maya.
• Restart Maya

Usage

Use the DuPivot shelf

Maya command / Scripting

You can also use the centerPivot maya command.

There are five modes given with the -m or -mode parameter:

• ‘barycenter’ is the geometric barycenter (i.e. the average location of all vertices).
  It works with meshes, nurbs curves and nurbs surfaces
• ‘mass’ is an approximation of the center of mass (i.e. the centroid).
  It is computed like the barycenter but each vertex is given a weight to counter-balance the local mesh density, and results in a fairly accurate approximation of the center of mass in most cases.
• ‘boundingbox’ is the center of the bounding box. This is the same as the center pivot native Maya command.
• ‘top’ is the center of the top of the bounding box (i.e. the x and z center and maximum y, in world coordinates).
• ‘bottom’ is the center of the bottom of the bounding box (i.e. the x and z center and minimum y, in world coordinates).

Python

# Python
from maya import cmds
cmds.centerPivot() # Barycenter
cmds.centerPivot(mode='barycenter') # Barycenter
cmds.centerPivot(mode='mass') # Center of mass
cmds.centerPivot(mode='boundingbox') # Center of the bounding box. Same as 'maya.cmds.xform(cpc=True)'
cmds.centerPivot(mode='top') # Top center of the bounding box
cmds.centerPivot(mode='bottom') # Bottom center of the bounding box

Mel

// Mel
centerPivot // Barycenter
centerPivot -mode barycenter // Barycenter
centerPivot -mode mass // Center of mass
centerPivot -mode boundingbox // Center of the bounding box. Same as 'xform -cpc'
centerPivot -mode top // Top center of the bounding box
centerPivot -mode bottom // Bottom center of the bounding box

You can add these commands to a shelf, or use them to create a keyboard shortcuts.