rotation

[nzoreo]

I really feel I should know this, but I apologise...I don't.. So here I am animating a space ship, using explicit translation. When I go to rotate the ship, it goes completly tits up, the X n Z go all over the shop. I have tried Global and Local axis, but still the same trouble...am I being a complete idiot, or is there some clever trick I should know.....

ta
Alex

[fredc]

In reply to:
I really feel I should know this, but I apologise...I don't.. So here I am animating a space ship, using explicit translation. When I go to rotate the ship, it goes completly tits up, the X n Z go all over the shop. I have tried Global and Local axis, but still the same trouble...am I being a complete idiot, or is there some clever trick I should know.....ta
Alex

Are you certain your object's axes are going in the direction you think? Use Show/center. Red is X, Green is Y and Z is blue. When you rotate in
local or add directions, your object should rotate around the axes you see in your object. If this is the problem. Rotate the object as best
you can to the proper 0,0,0 and use effects freeze/rotations to reset it back.

If you are still having problems, try rotating just a primitive object to be sure it isn't something isolated to your current object.

By the way, if you are animating the ship to do more than move from point A to B, such as turning and banking- I highly recommend using
a path animation with a tangent and up-vector constraint. If you need help, just ask.

Hope this helps,
Urp

Edited by Urp on 01/14/02 02:10:42 PM.

[atyss]

Bonjour,

I agree with Urp when he says that you should animate on path if your animation is simple. Another effective solution is to parent everything to a null, and animate this null instead of the actual model. So when there is troubles it is only a null that you have to edit.

Another thing: when I finish my models and am about to animate them, I always do 2 things before parenting my objects.
1-Freeze transformations on every objects (Model > Effect > Freeze > Transformations)
2-I tag every points and do a Model > Edit > Center 2 Vertices
This way I make sure that every center is properly placed, and honestly I never have transformation problems.

On a side note, if you are rotating on several axes without paying attention to your angles, you might be experiencing what is called a gimbal lock. To put it simple, the gimbal lock is an axes confusion that occur when an object has rotated 90