Strange camera tumbling

[xr4y]

Occasionally, and without any obvious reason that I can see, my perspective cameras start tumbling in very odd ways. The best way to describe it is as if the center has located itself on the camera instead of its focal point. As I describe the problem, some things to try enter my mind, but I have tried some things such as changing the center of interest...has anyone experienced this kind of problem? If so, how do you fix it? And why would it seem to appear randomly? Is there a hotkey I'm hitting without knowing it?

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

[cplusplus]

sounds like a bad case of gimbal lock. Look around for some posts on the subject. They know a lot of stuff around here. Good luck.

squag

[empleh]

This is probably not what you mean but if the time slider is moving when this happens check for accidental keys set on the camera. I have had problems keying a camera with a hot key instead of the channel box before which resulted in similar sounding problems.

Hope this helps,
ww

[tokyostormdrain]

I THINK I know what you're talking about, and I'll try to share a bit of knowledge...

I don't have a definite solution to this problem (I'm still hoping the problem I'm talking about is the problem you're talking about!).

One thing that seems to effect the tumble is the scale of the objects. A larger object seems to take more time to tumble around, but a smaller one might tumble erratically. Messing wtih scale MIGHT help, but if that doesn't work then this probably will:

Sometimes it just seems that Maya loses it's central focus and gets that weird tumbling action. There's one little trick that I use 100 times a day that makes navigating the windows so much easier.

Holding down Ctrl+Alt and marquee selecting over an object will center that object (or whatever you select within the box) in your window. If your persp camera starts to tumble weird, try Ctrl+Alt selecting a box around your central object to "re-center" the focus of the camera. This might help to restore your tumbling. It's worked for me quite a few times.

If neither of those solutions work, sorry to have wasted your time. At the very least hopefully those of you who didn't know about Ctrl+Alt and marquee selecting can use this extremely handy shortcut now.

-FS_RAZ

[goesb]

Theres another easy way to "re-Focus" you're cameras. Simply select your object and push the F key.

[tokyostormdrain]

Ah yes, good call my friend. ; )

"F" works to recenter, but it seems that Ctrl+Alt is the only way to get weird of said tumbling errors in my case. Go figure?

-FS_RAZ

[campbell]

View> Default Home may aslo do the trick...?