Houdini has the ability to Animate the pivot point. However in Max when you choose Affect Pivot, this is not an animatable attribute. The effect I want is similar to working with an XForm Modifier on a teapot, where you animate the Gizmo and then animate the pivot of the XForm modifier.

For obvious reason there are serious disadvantages to using an XForm Modifier, so I want this to work with the object, not the sub object and to effect all children objects as well.

As far as I know, using a parenting system will not work, because the Movement of the parent would adversely affect the child object where only rotation is wanted to change, and there would need to be a counter positional change. Though I can imagine with scripting this could be done where position data could be subtracted from the child. But if you take a look at Houdini, it seems to work as expected, so it could give you an idea of what I am looking for.