(3ds Max) Why do objects fall apart when rotated?

Why is it some objects when they are rotated they tend to fall apart as seen in this video

Ship messed up when rotated

I'm new at using 3ds Max 9 so of course i'm sure the solution is easy, but any input would be great. Thank you.

 

I dont use max, I use blender. But I beleive I know your problem. I am assuming that what you are rotating are multiple meshes. I also beleive that the origin is messed up, which is why. When the origin isnt in the right place, that will happen. I am assuming that you different meshes have all different origins. Well, I hoped that help. Try converting your model to all one mesh. Good luck.
Bruce

 

Like Bruce said...


that's you're problem....


Try merging you're meshes into one....

 

Yeah, each object have their own pivot point and so when You try to rotate them all it's just rotating each one individually. You can rotate them all as one object by making them into a group. It's one of the top drop-down menus, I think Modify-->Group and it will be like one object. If you don't want them to be like one object but still be able to move them around like one you can create a dummy object and then link/attach all of the objects to the Dummy and then animate with the dummy. If there's a term you aren't familiar with, just do a quick search in the User Reference and it should be able to tell you everything you need to know.

 

do the dummies! and try to union dummies onto of dummies, if that makes sense. So have one main dummy that holds the mesh together which is under the control of another dummy that souly deals with rotation and then have that second dummy under one which only deals with motion. That way if you dont like the rotation or what to change its motion you only have to change one dummy and easily see what key frames to deal with, rather then going through and try to figure it out.

 

You don't have to merge anything if you don't want to, there is a much simpler solution built into Max.

I'm not going to remember the name of the icon now of course, because that'd make this easy...but you should see one around halfway across the toolbar that looks like rectangles side by side with a small red dot/circle there. If you click and hold down on it, the other button options will appear.

One of these icons will show the two rectangle with the red dot centered between the two rectangles. What this is doing is it allows you to set how you want the rotation pivot point to be handled when you have multiple points selected.

After selecting that, any objects you have will rotate together properly.

 

its just as easy as grouping . All you need is group the meshes and then rotate and the ungroup if u need. Otherwise yeah it messes up, all u can center the pivot point in the middle of the selection, but i would just use grouping...easier.

 

The problem with using grouping as a lazy way to rotate is you're not actually changing the local rotation of the object(s) itself. For simple renders and animation, that won't make a huge difference but it will cause problems farther along.

Same reason you are never supposed to use the scale tool on an object. If you have to scale something, you go into edit poly mode, select all faces, THEN you can scale. Otherwise Max believes the object is still the original size even though it looks a lot bigger.

There is a right way and a quick/easy/lazy way to do just about everything in Max. This is one of those things.