[Maya] - Rotation Wobble - help

Hey guys,

I feel I would screw up explaining my issue so I made a video for it, hope it helps-

[video]https://youtu.be/CoEQZjDMyIk[/video]

On the tests I ran even having the local rot axis of the bolt normal to the bolt head (and the “box”) gave me a wobbled rotation… In 3ds Max I would use the TCB Rotational controller, but this is Maya. :smiley:

I’m looking for the best way to resolve this issue and get the screw rotating correctly along one axis aligned with the length of the screw.

Thanks much for any help,
9k

You’re only seeing the wobble when you are not on the keys, yes?

you are animating over 3 axis at the same time, so probably there is some gimbal problems going on. normally if you would animate this you should make the space/pivot of the screw oriented correctly to make sure that only 1 axis is animated this is the easiest way to prevent that wobble in the animation

That makes sense. I was stupid an froze local rot axis earlier on in the project… Should of kept them and stuck them in a group and froze the group rotational axis if I wanted them aligned with world…

On to what you said, even with properly aligned local rotational axis (see first half of below video), Maya is still animating the rotation as if the axis were aligned to the world. How do I change the animation to recognize local rotational axis of an object and rotate only around one axis?

[video]https://youtu.be/38saUUBS3rc[/video]

I guess the question becomes what is the proper way to rotate something like this only on one of it’s local axis? I’m sure if I animate this thing going straight up I won’t get a wobble since regardless of pivot at this point the object is rotating around world axis coordinates.

Never had to animate like this in Maya so a bit clueless.

Thanks a million,
9k

put the objects you want to move and rotate in a group that is oriented in the way you want, the channels for the objects should then become 0 which makes it easier to animate
then only key the translate and rotate channel you need (not really necessary but it keeps things clean)

Works like a charm Peerke. Thank you for pointing this out.

Quick question though… How do you Freeze (zero out) a groups transform without doing it to all the other groups and mesh objects inside of that top level group?

Whenever I select the channels I want to freeze (after selecting a group… not a mesh object or sub group), all my objects sub groups get frozen too along with the top level group.

Thanks much for all the info.

-9k

normally when you go for animation you don’t freeze the objects, that’s more something for modeling and creating clean geo

if you have clean geo positioned on the origin of your scene you can group it, and treat the group as your control, the objects inside will have clean channels( e.g. translate and rotate 0, scale 1), the group can then be translated rotated and scaled to the position you want, the objects inside will transform with the group

> group will get translate and rotation values
> objects inside will stay clean

and clean values are easy to key and to keep track off
but, when you freeze the group this will also freeze its children,
if you unparent the children and freeze the group then parent the children back in it will clean the group but will make the children messy again

be carefull and take this all in consideration when making rigs/ animating objects as they will influence the end result

note: this is also the way you create oriented controls for a rig

Thanks again for the information!

I don’t do any character rigging/animation really, but deal with hard surface product renders translated from Solidworks into Maya… So here’s my situation right now…

I have an imported model that I’ve positioned at origin (zero’d out). Then I bring in hardware (bolts and screws and stuff) to populate the object… So it goes TransformGroup>TransformGroup(for the rotation)>Mesh object… Everything zero’d ‘frozen’ until I position it… But after I position it (which involves rotation and translation of the top level transform), I want to Zero the top transform out. I want to do this because the screw is where I want it, and if I zero the top level transform I can “bake in” where the screw should be on the object…

BUT… Then if I zero it out, it freezes the local rotation info into the subgroup (so it can’t be rotated properly on one axis)… So what is the proper way to do this? To make sure that the hardware has a way to have a “home” location without freezing all the transforms?

You rock btw. Thanks for the info. I know it’s pretty basic.

the only thing that can be frozen in a certain rotation is a joint, but thats only rotation not translation. dont really get why you want to have everything frozen or anything frozen for that matter when the result of the animation is working without the frozen channels