Pivot Painter - Blender Addon

The Pivot Painter Tool for Blender is an addon designed to streamline the creation of pivot data necessary for Unreal Engine's Pivot Painter feature. This tool empowers artists to encode pivot points and hierarchical information into textures, enabling advanced shader-driven animations directly in Unreal Engine.

What is Pivot Painter?

Pivot Painter is a tool in Unreal Engine that encodes object pivot positions and orientation data into textures. These textures allow artists to create dynamic animations, such as swaying foliage, twisting branches, and procedural architectural effects, using Unreal Engine’s shader system.

📖 Learn more about Pivot Painter in the official Unreal Engine documentation.

Addon Features

• Pivot and Orientation Encoding: Encode the positions and rotation axes of object pivots into a texture format compatible with Unreal Engine’s Pivot Painter.
• Hierarchical Data Encoding: Automatically encode object hierarchies for complex animations.
• UV-Based Data Mapping: Efficiently map pivot data into the UV space for seamless integration with Unreal Engine shaders.
• Customizable Parameters: Adjust encoding settings to suit your specific project needs, such as pivot placement and rotation axes.
• Integrated Workflow: A user-friendly interface within Blender, accessible via the addon panel.
• Export Readiness: Automatically prepare and export pivot data textures for direct use in Unreal Engine.
• Process Option: Automatically or manually make the unit conversion for the baking
• Mesh Export: Export the complete hierarchy at a specified location, centered in the world.
• Preview Bend Deformation: Preview bend deformation per meshes, throught geometry nodes (in future update it will be with hierarchy offset too) (in progress)

How to Use

1. Install the addon in Blender and activate it.
2. Set up your objects, ensuring pivots and hierarchies are correctly defined.
3. Use the addon panel to encode the pivot and rotation data into UV maps.
4. Export the objects and textures in a format compatible with Unreal Engine.
5. Apply Pivot Painter shaders in Unreal Engine to realize dynamic animations.

This addon bridges the gap between Blender and Unreal Engine, making it easy to create complex, shader-driven effects with precision and efficiency.

Author

• Revampe, adaptation, api switch and new features from Kostia Perry (Tarmunds)
• Initial blender script from George Vogiatzis (Gvgeo)
• Original 3dsMaxScript Pivot Painter 2.0 from Jonathan Lindquist at Epic Games

License

This project is Licensed under the GPL v3.0, see the LICENSE.txt file for details.

Acknowledgment

• This addon is based on the 3dsMaxScript Pivot Painter version 2.0 written by Jonathan Lindquist at Epic Games.