weird rotation keying problem in Max

Krisonrik

Long story short, I'm trying to key the rotation of a point helper. I am trying to have it spin around it's local z axis while it's tilted with an angle in x and/or y axis. Everything looks fine when I manually rotate things around, but when I play back, it will keep spinning in world z axis. I even tried to use track view to key it so that x and y axis is flat lined but even that failed me. I do not understand at all what is going on. Is curve editor controling the world axis or the local axis. If it's world axis, is there a way to key local axis rotation? Thanks in advance.

nezach

Go into the motion tab and change your axes order until you find one that works for you. ZYX or ZXY might work for you based on the info you gave.

Here's a vid explaining what's going on http://www.guerrillacg.org/home/3d-rigging/the-rotation-problem

Krisonrik

Thanks nezach, that video was very helpful. I am self-taught 3d modeler. Never was much of a rigger or animator until I took this new job. I guess I never ran into the Gimbal lock problem, or I just simply ignored it because it didn't cause much problem for me during modeling.