Maya and Pivot points

[Adam H. Stewart]

I am working in Maya again - 8.5. The Model I am using is super complicated - it's of a truck and I it has thousands of parts with no grouping. I need to move these parts around to Transform it into something else - it's for a pitch for a web banner. I am trying to get Maya to act more like max, The parts of the truck haven't been grouped very logically, so I am re-grouping pieces, but my group pivot always goes back to 0,0,0 - is there any easy way to group things the way you would in max - say with a dummy where the grouped objects take the dummy's pivot point as it's pivot ?

Sorry about the long winded question - any help you can give me will be very much appreciated.

Thanks as always.

[Bathyscaph]

Some of the following tidbits might help:

1. You can hit the insert key and that will let you move the pivot point of the group to anywhere you'd like.

2. You can create a locator object which functions like a dummy in max and use that as your pivot. Just select Locator from the Create menu.

3. Perhaps the easiest way to link objects in maya is by using the Outliner window. Available by selecting Outliner from the Window menu. This lets you parent objects by using the MMB and dragging the child object or group to its new parent. You can MMB-drag several groups for instance to a locator object so that the objects will pivot as you expect.

Hope it helps.

[Adam H. Stewart]

Sweet

Thanks a million - that does indeed help - great advice - I give the locator option a shot

Thanks again.