Attached Link: Dr. Geep's Tutorial

Trying to fix the origin of an object is still not the most intuitive thing in the world. The recent DAZ weekly freebie, David's Warrior Props, includes a blade that has its origin and endpoint at an offset distance from the prop. The end result is that any rotations rotate around a large circle rather than the prop (yRotate does not spin the blade around it's long axis, it rotates it in a large circle). I used Dr. Geep's linked tutorial as a starting point, but things are still a bit confusing. For one, is there a way to click on the center point or the end point so that it can be moved without also moving the object? A lot of the time, grabbing the centerpoint and trying to move it results in movement of the prop so that it cannot be brought closer. It seems to happen less with the end point. I finally got the origin and end points on the blade and, with the current arrangement, rotating the blade with zRotate rotates it about its long axis. Where should the two points be so that this is done with yRotate?

I don't think you can change the basic orientation with the colorful arrows. One solution is to set it vertical, then export it as OBJ. When you reimport, the axis will be the Y rot. A fancier solution is to parent the sword to an invisible Ball, arranged so that the Yrot of the Ball gives you the axial turn. Then you could save this combination as a figure. This would give the sword full freedom of motion; when gimbal lock makes one rotation difficult, you can use the Ball or the new figure's Body instead.

Not 100 percent certain on this, but I think if you set all the translations rotations and scales to zero, you should be able to move the origin without moving the prop.

You can cahnge the orientation of the origin with the "Orientation" dials in the Joint Editor, but it's not intuitive, it's a little like working with a Rubik's cube. For example to swap Y and Z axes you enter a value of 90.000 on the xrot dial (in the Joint Editor).

As Ockham says you can use a prop seting it to invisible and parenting your sword to it to completely overcome gimbal lock. This seems to be the main function of the BODY actor in figures.

Message edited on: 10/20/2004 13:24

You might want to ... ... Try this one. cheers, dr geep ;=]