nito

ok, will do.
thanks jeff 8)

Hi , sorry if i'm rehashing old topics but i feel this one is important for animators.

You will get gimbal lock problems without even using a rig… rotations on a simple cube will do the same thing. You will start to find limitations with your rotations - crazy twisting/flipping.
So i dont think its really just a rig problem.

I know there are ways to include extra objects into your rig so that when you encounter a problem, you switch to those objects. I've used this method myself.

But Maya/Softimage has a cool little feature : *Euler Filter*
If I have animated characters that flip and twist at the same time, I will get gimbal lock( crazy twisting/flipping) on playback.
But if I just click that button in the graph editor/euler filter, it fixes the mangled twisting for me. I havent had to worry about gimbal lock 99% of the time.
It also saves time with rigging and trying to manage an extra set of rotation keyframes for those extra gimbal controls.

It seems Maya/Softimage looks at the surrounding keyframes/rotations, and finds the most logical rotation path , then adjusts the rotation curve accordingly. Its like magic , no more crazy twisting/flipping.

maybe Houdini has this now, i have tried to look for it but cant seem to find anything on it.

cheers nito