Where Is Transformation "offset" Hidden?

[user_deleted]

Hey all,

I have a BIG problem here. I just found out that an asset of mine has a problem, but I've already deployed it 200 times. So now one problem has turned into 200 problems. Here is what it is:

This asset was not at the center of the world when I froze transformation (I know, VERY amateurish and sloppy)

So, if you set its translations to zero, zero, zero, its pivot point does not line up with the origin. And I need it to.

The problem is, these 200 copies have keyframes (that took days to animate) so I can't just redeploy etc.

What I am wondering is - Is this 'offset' information stored anywhere, like in some hidden attribute, that I can edit? I mean, Maya has to know this somehow, right? let's say at 0, 0, 0, my object is at -2, -3, -1 (for example) in world space, are those values stored anywhere?

Please help! Fixing this by hand will take years. I am able to script so even a point in the right direction to script something would help. Thanks!

[christianmassyn]

Take 1 of the objects to 0 0 0
Snap the pivot manually read the exact values from the script editor and copy the command into a loop that will run through all the objects

[joojaa]

QUOTE
What I am wondering is - Is this 'offset' information stored anywhere,

No, how many time do have to tell you guys this. Freeze is a one way deal. Theres NO WAY TO UNFREEZE once history is gone. Thats the Entire POINT of having a freeze in first place. (there's is no other reason! Even if you misuse, thsi si what you do. Computers are big on what you do not on what you think you do)

You can luck out tough, and the pivot is at a intact place. Then you have a reference and you can counter freeze (read below its not a unfreeze). But once all this info is deleted its gone.

But basically what freeze does is it MOVES all points from yoru current transform position so that that stay put when it moves the center of the objects space to the transforms parent space.

This is a massive operation and Destructive. My solution at a studio wast to remove freeze form teh menu because people used it for all sots of woodoo things. Because they tought it was a magic button. It is in fact one of the best things that shows if you know what your doing or jsut do what you have been told.

So for having simply:

point 0 0 1 in space 0 2 2 freezing would move the point to 0 2 3 and set the space to 0 0 0. Aside for that theres a pivot wich is free to be anywhere Wch could stay intact but once moved thsi datas GONE bye bye.

The purpose of freeze is for you to be able to move points in space to new spaces. Wich is allmost never what its used for.

This said there's another place that can luck you out from. If you have older versions of the file then you can deconstruct the position for the actual transform relative to points. S again you could countermove. BUT its still not a UNFREEZE, its just a freeze on freeze! Wich isnt entirely the same thing. Its a bit like saving and editing a jpeg 2 times. It gathers approximation on top of other approx.

so to fibnalize

QUOTE

Where Is Transformation "offset" Hidden?

its added to each and every point in your object. And you cannot know what it is unless you Know a reference to where the points used to be.

SO ITS NOT STORED!

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Christian_M @ 08/15/08, 11:03 AM) [snapback]289696[/snapback]
Take 1 of the objects to 0 0 0
Snap the pivot manually read the exact values from the script editor and copy the command into a loop that will run through all the objects

That assumes that the pivot is intact and never in the course of things was moved. Freeze itself is NOT a operation you can reverse. You can just rebuild the same situation. Theres a HUGE difference.

Its liek thsi if i have a glass of water i can pour it to the flor, I can put it back exactly where it was IF the water was actually FROZEN and in same state it was previous. Otherwise i have a bit of trouble with putting teh water back.

Its a bit luck if or if not you can do this or not.

As a general rule the situations where you cannot are bigger than the ones where you can.

The pivot has absolutely NOTHING to do with the center of the object.

[user_deleted]

Ok - I get that. Some of it anyway. I'm sorry to say you're straining my brain capacity to its limit, it's already overwhelmed by this cluster**** I've created.

However I have a little script called "thaw transformations" which is a fake "reverse freeze" (translations only), that essentially figures out how far from the origin your object is when it's at 0,0,0, and "unfreezes" it.

Like this:

CODE
// thaw transform
string $allNodez[];
string $node;

$allNodez = selectedNodes;

if((objExists zeroLocator)!=1)
{
catch (spaceLocator -n zeroLocator -p 0 0 0);
}
for ($node in $allNodez)
{
select -r $node;
select -tgl zeroLocator;
delete pointConstraint -offset 0 0 0 -weight 1;

select -r $node;
move -rpr 0 0 0;
makeIdentity -apply true -t 1 -r 1 -s 1 -n 0;

select -r zeroLocator;
select -tgl $node;
delete pointConstraint -offset 0 0 0 -weight 1;
}

It works great for what I need.
BUT - not on an object that has keyframes. Not to mention 200 objects.

At least it gives me the values of how far from the origin I strayed.
so I may just use the keyframe command to shift all my anim curves.

[joojaa]

QUOTE
already overwhelmed by this cluster**** I've created.

you didnt say its a cluster, clusters do have a offset! Ist so you can do boned animation. Its called bind state eg:

cluster -e -bs 1 -wn nurbsSphere2 nurbsSphere2 cluster1;

QUOTE
so I may just use the keyframe command to shift all my anim curves.

dont shift jsut re move the assset opposite way. Keep the curves intact.

ABOUT THE FREEZING:

To be totally honest, i have to this day not understood how this issue can be so flabbergastingly hard to grasp. I mean its more basic than 99.9999% of stuff we do every day. Its a bit on the same level of simplicity as asking computer advice and turns out you haven't plugged in the wall socket.

Do this. Take your shoe off and throw it on the floor. Measure with measuring tape from the corner of the room and define one dge of the room as x and other y. Measure a x and y for number of positions around the shoe to get a linear representation of your socks view from top of the world. Write theese results down.

Now what would freeze represent? Nothing, yet.

Now if you want to describe a shoe moving on the floor Its a bit impractical to keep measuring its points for the shoe all the time. But do this, place piece of cardboard or better yet a transparent piece of plastic. Now measure the points for the shoe on corners of this container (define one y and one x and where the cross origin). This is your transform. Now what you do is you measure the corners of this container to the corner of your room and denote.
CODE
|XaxisXEndPointCord XaxisYEndPointCord|
|YaxisXEndPointCord YaxisXEndPointCord|
|OriginXCord        OriginYCord       |

Well fine this is okay you can now place the shoe wherever you want with measuring 3 points in space, Because doing so is faster then ,measiring all poits its faster to move the shoe about, So you can afford to measure more points around.

Now what the hell is freeze in this setup? Well let us suppose you originally put the shoe randomly on the cardboard/platic transformation space. And your really interested in knowing what way is forward on the shoe. then what you'd do is lift the shoe and turn the transform and lower it down and measure the points a new. Now since keeping thsi old notation around
is no longer needed to describe the position of the shoe you discard it. You've now frozen the place of the shoe. And unless you store the all the points 2 times. Its still the same shoe just the reference is in different place.

what the hell? So freezing redefines the way you measure the shoe. Its all spiffy and fine to do this unless you already have measurements that depend on the old coordinate system. Now since coordinate systems themselves are arbitrary it does not matter, even the original corner chose in the room does not matter it too is arbitrary. But teh combination of cheese have a meaning for place. If you later change any one of these measurement points elsewhere the measured data does not align up.

So its fine to freeze before you begin anything. But not once you add some meaning to it. So often you see freeze happening because the rigger does not like the numbers in the channelbox. But sure as long as you do it FIRST.

OVERCOURSE:

It turns out the notation above is a bit tedious but gets the point across. In reality it you would be a pit preoccupied if you'd measure all the 3 points form origin. What you instead do is measure the Origin the world of that the origin on your transform container and measure the axes local to that. This saves you going back and forth to origin 2 times of 3. So what you really have is:
CODE
|XaxisXEndPointCord-OriginXCord  XaxisYEndPointCord-OriginYCord  0|
|YaxisXEndPointCord-OriginXCord  YaxisXEndPointCord-OriginYCord  0|
|OriginXCord                     OriginYCord                     1|

The last column is there to fill out a requirement in matix mathematics, you can think of it as not used. But the 0 0 1 gives additional property thats nifty to have. Off course 0 0 0 would be also useless. This is a linear combination and there s set of mathematics dealing with this Aailable allowing you to sum up many of theese notations into one by multiplication so thet the last part of point movement can avoid to do whole chain of computation.

Do you need a animation to explain this visually? By the way this IS IMPORTANT, its the absolute basis of what you do all day.

[gmask]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 08/15/08, 01:39 AM) [snapback]289713[/snapback]
No, how many time do have to tell you guys this. Freeze is a one way deal. Theres NO WAY TO UNFREEZE once history is gone. Thats the Entire POINT of having a freeze in first place. (there's is no other reason! Even if you misuse, thsi si what you do. Computers are big on what you do not on what you think you do)

I think we need to spam a sticky about this to several of the sub forums.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
No, how many time do have to tell you guys this. Freeze is a one way deal. Theres NO WAY TO UNFREEZE once history is gone.

I do understand this - that freeze is destructive. But I guess it wasn't clear in my post which I just re-read.

QUOTE
you didnt say its a cluster

it's not, clusterf**k is just an expression.

no, not a mel expression. an english expression.

anyway: the point is, my pivot was never touched. So it's easy to re-build a situation equivalent to the original one. In this PARTICULAR case. I realize sometimes you are screwed.

Anyway, I fixed it, I wrote a script that shifted all my anim curves by the amount I'd offset everything by. It was a mess. It took 3 days. lesson learned.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(gmask @ 08/17/08, 08:26 PM) [snapback]289860[/snapback]
I think we need to spam a sticky about this to several of the sub forums.

Wouldn't it be better if we made a faq entry and just kill all the stickes and tell people to go to the faq, its easier to maintain.

hmmm:

QUOTE
it's not, clusterf**k is just an expression.

no, not a mel expression. an english expression.

read :

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
read :

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html

lol, good one

[gmask]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 08/19/08, 02:43 AM) [snapback]289974[/snapback]
Wouldn't it be better if we made a faq entry and just kill all the stickes and tell people to go to the faq, its easier to maintain.

What's a FAQ???? LOL

There should be a FAQ entry but that doesn't mean that people will look for it there or look at all before asking and this one comes up alot.. off the top of my head the only worse offender is problems with non qualified display cards.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(gmask @ 08/19/08, 06:03 PM) [snapback]290001[/snapback]
d the only worse offender is problems with non qualified display cards.

Yes sadly. This being more of disbelief of facts kind of thing more than anything else.