Snap cursor to view focus?

Question

There's a point your view orbits. I'd like to snap the cursor there but I can't see how to do that, even if I hit the center of the window pixel perfect the depth will be wrong.

I can sorta get it by repeatedly clicking and rotating to make the cursor not move when I rotate it but that's finicky and the original viewpoint is lost

I found adding a cube aligned to the view, make it the camera, pop back out to user view, align the "camera" to that, make it a skinny guesstimated-long-enough pole, then rotate the view and repeat the process, the intersection of the two poles is where I want to put the cursor and the first object's origin is my original viewpoint,

Or I could save the viewpoint by dropping a nonce empty and do the view-snapping trick then the home-in-on-the-cursor dance, …

This seems clearly newbie ignorance biting me here, there has to be an easier way but I just can't see it.

What prompted this is trying to translate and reorient a selection / local scene to the view plane, centered on the view focus and rotated so its Z and X align with the view Y and X.

Answer 1

I thought this would make for a fun addon, so I wrote it! You can download the addon here, plus I've copied the source below since it's very short. To install it, download the file or copy the below into a file with a .py extension, then follow the usual steps. It will create an entry in the 3D View > Object > Snap menu:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Snap 3D Cursor to View Pivot",
    "author": "gandalf3",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (3, 4, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Object > Snap > Cursor to View Pivot",
    "description": "Snap 3D Cursor to the 3D view pivot",
    "doc_url": "https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/286941",
    "category": "3D View",
}

import bpy

class SnapCursorToViewPivot(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Snap 3D Cursor to the 3D view pivot"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.snap_cursor_to_view_pivot"
    bl_label = "Cursor to View Pivot"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.area is not None and\
               context.area.type == 'VIEW_3D' and\
               context.scene is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        context.scene.cursor.location = context.space_data.region_3d.view_location
        context.scene.cursor.rotation_quaternion = context.space_data.region_3d.view_rotation
        return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(SnapCursorToViewPivot.bl_idname, text=SnapCursorToViewPivot.bl_label)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SnapCursorToViewPivot)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_snap.append(menu_func)
    # uncomment the line below to add an entry to the snap pie menu as well;
    # this menu is already crowded though..
    #bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_snap_pie.append(menu_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SnapCursorToViewPivot)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_snap.remove(menu_func)
    # if you uncomment the line above, don't forget to uncomment this line too!
    #bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_snap_pie.remove(menu_func)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

Hopefully its useful! I'm not sure I fully understand your use case, but here are some other related tricks which I hope may be helpful:

• Center view to selection: Numpad .

• Snap view to front/side/top in selection's local space: ShiftNumpad <1 or 3 or 7> (similar to numpad <1, 3, 7> for global front/side/top; adding Ctrl flips to opposite perspective)

• 3D View > Object > Transform > Align to Transform Orientation to align the selected object(s) to the current transform orientation.

• Creating custom transform orientations!

  1. If you want to create the orientation based on an existing object or an edge or face, select it.
  2. Click the transform orientation dropdown in the 3D view header
  3. Click the little plus to the right.
  4. If you want to create the orientation from on the current view orientation, enable Use View in the redo menu (otherwise disable it).
  5. Optionally give it a name via the redo menu
  6. Transform to your heart's content using the usual tools

  Here's an example: