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I'm wanting to move the origin (widget) to the center of this object. The object (mesh and bones) was appended from a previous animation, and it looks the same in my animation. I have tried shift ctrl. alt C > origin to center of mass. Also I noticed that when I shift S cursor to selected, the cursor goes to the widget (origin). I have a feeling this happened because I moved the object with it's root bone rather than the x,y,z arrows. The Root bone is sticking out out the center of the objects back My animation seems to be working fine with the origin being offset as it is. Just out of curiosity, when I render the animation could the origin being offset like this, hurt anything?enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Possible duplicate of: How to recenter an object's origin? $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    May 4, 2019 at 23:32
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    $\begingroup$ "I moved the object with it's root bone" don't translate rigged objects independently on what they deform. If translating do so in Object mode for both object so their local coordinates remain to be the same. You can stick to resulted origin point as long as it works normally, though it can cause troubles if moved further away in the scene (possible precision errors while showing geometry) $\endgroup$
    – Mr Zak
    May 5, 2019 at 0:22

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I think your problem is this one:

Your armature has an origin, like any object. If you move and animate the whole armature in Object mode the origin will follow, because its position is linked to the object. But if you go within the object in Pose mode and begin to move the bones, it won't affect the origin position in any way, because the origin is linked to the armature position, not to the bones position within the armature, so with some animations the bones can move far away from the origin.

Generally, when you animate in Pose mode, you don't move the root bone, so this bone will stay close to the origin. But if you begin to move it, for a reason or another, it may also move far away from the origin.

If you want to see what is the real position of the bones within your armature, relatively to the origin, go in Pose mode, select all your bones and press altR, altG and altS, or in the Properties panel > Data > Skeleton, press Rest Position, or switch to Edit mode... you'll come back to the rest position and you'll see that the bones will probably come back close to the origin, so you'll probably won't find any reason to move the origin position.

Now if, in rest position, the origin position doesn't please you, which in my opinion is probably not your problem here, you can change it: Switch to Edit mode, then, like for any other object you need to put the 3D cursor where you want the origin to be, then shiftctrlaltC> Origin to 3D Cursor.

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If you just want to move the object's origin (pivot) to the geometric mean, this option is available in the Object -> Set Origin menu. This is similar to how it was in 2.79 except now the origin has its own menu, whereas before it was under Object -> Transform.

If you want to move the cursor someplace and then snap the origin to the cursor, the same shortcut for the cursor menu in 2.79 also applies in 2.80. Press SHIFT+S and choose "Cursor to Selected" (where your transform pivot option is already set to "Median"). You can then set an object's origin to the cursor location.

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  • $\begingroup$ You were right. I selected all the bones and saw that the xyz widget was in the center of the character. When the mesh is selected the xyz widget is not centered. I noticed too that when I go to edit mode the mesh jumps to the xyz widget. I did try something; I selected my mesh and shift s >cursor to selected, the cursor went to the offset xyz widget. My animation is almost finished. Is there a way to get the mesh's xyz widget to the mesh? Also is the origin the same thing as the xyz widget? After reading xyz widget a bunch of times you can probably tell I don't know. $\endgroup$
    – J.D.
    May 5, 2019 at 22:17
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    $\begingroup$ I haven't heard "widget" used to describe it for Blender. An object's origin is a small yellow dot; The 3d cursor is an open circle with a crosshair through it. Blender provides options for transforming (translation/rotation/scale) about an object's origin, the 3d cursor, or various means (averages). Setting an object's origin to the geometric mean is an option in the Object -> Set Origin menu. Before this I would use the 3d cursor menu to first set the cursor to the object's mean, and then set the origin to the cursor location. Let me know if you can't find the options $\endgroup$ May 5, 2019 at 22:36
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    $\begingroup$ I usually set transformations to pivot about the object's origin instead of the cursor so I don't have to keep moving the cursor again every time I move the object. $\endgroup$ May 5, 2019 at 22:39
  • $\begingroup$ This worked great for me and it works when you select multiple items too, Blender will set the origin to all of them respectively. $\endgroup$
    – deltaray
    May 23, 2022 at 13:53

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