Takes a bit to get used to the 180 and -180 limit on rotation. In Lightwave you can rotate as much as you want in any direction. You can go past 180 either way. A lot easier to set up rotations that way. Want it to spin 2 times, just set it to 720 or -720. No need to worry about being less than 180 degrees apart each time. This will take a bit of getting used to.

I figured out its best to work in increments of 90 degrees. Easier to keep the math straight that way. It would be nice in a future update if more than 180 degree rotation was allowed. Only need two key frames to do what requires many now. Of course once you get the intial rotation complete you can drag copy the keyframes, just seems easier to do it in terms of total rotation relative to the starting point.

Set up a spin modifier instead. That way you can go around as many times as you want between 2 times.

Ok, finally got it to work. That works for a straight rotation but I dont see a way to ease in or ease out. I found using 0,90,179,-90 easier for this particular problem, allows more control over how slowly the rotation comes to a stop. But I can see where the spin modifier will be useful. Thanks

Setup an Bezier curve tweener on your timeline and you can adjust your ease-in and out. Make sure you've opened up all your parameters before you set the bezier tweener. That way you'll only adjust that one parameter of the object as opposed to all of them!

Yeah, I did that and it worked. Thanks for the info though.

What do you think so far? Have you decided to shelve Lightwave yet?

Another option that will work (in some cases) is to add a Rotate modifier. You select the + icon under the modifier tab and scroll down to the bottom, it is under Basic Deformations header. The slider only goes from 180 to 180 but you can type (almost) any value in the numerical box and it will work. The only problem with this is some funkyness with the point of rotation, you might need to group your object with a Target Helper Object (null) and apply the rotate deformer to the group to get a more complex object to rotate the way you want it to. mdc

Hi mdc, thanks for the tip. That works better than the spin, because you can set a true value--like I was talking about in Lightwave. The way I did it was to just rotate 90 degrees the first time, then set it to 179, then -90, then back to zero. I am talking about just keyframes here, I didnt see you suggestion on the rotate modifier until now. Once these keyframes are created its a matter of squashing or stretching them to decide how fast it should complete one rotation. Then once that is set, its a matter of marquee selecting the keyframes and Alt dragging copies of them. Not too rough, but could be easier with the implementation of greater than 180 degree rotation. Still possible, just an extra step. However, with your tip and using the spline curve editor, I can do the same thing in two easy steps. Thanks again. Donnie

Hi Steama. No, I havnt decided to shelve LW just yet, but I am getting more comfortable with Carrara each day. I should have a project coming up soon for the studio. One of their clients, a local car dealer, usually has a theme for each month. So, for that project I intend to try Carrara since they are usually fairly simple. There are very few things I have done over the years with Lightwave that Carrara couldnt handle. Mainly Hypervovels. Modeling is a different story though. The modeler will be the hardest for me to wean myself from. I can see some things in Carrara that I would loved to have had for some past projects. Namely trees, and the explode deformer ( I like to run it backwards to "build" a logo from fragments). The other deformers are cool too. The rendering speed and a few of the things I mentioned above are the main reasons I was interested in Carrara, that and as I mentioned before, sometimes its good change software. Sometimes the challenge alone of learning something new and exploring its capabilities sparks some creativity. With that said, if I were a power user of Lightwave in a production environment doing lots of character animation or I was tied to a dedicated pipeline then I wouldnt even consider changing. But, for what I do Carrara can handle it and it has a lot of other stuff that I want to try, and of course the speedy rendering engine. Donnie

Cool and good luck with Carrara. It is a good piece of software.