A short while back, noviski posted a link to a Table of Joint Rotations that is great for setting constraints. Following the link to the table, I find it's from a book called "DIGITAL CHARACTER ANIMATION" by George Maestri [New Riders]. As always, I went to amazon.com and found that it's a $55.00US book, which they have several copies of [used] for $18.00. [with CD] Mine arrived today. After a quick go-thru, I cannot say enough good things about this. Beau coup good info on character modeling and animation. While the author says, straight out, that he's aiming at the upper end of the modeling world [3DS Max, SoftImage, Maya], there's little, apart from NURBS, and a few other lesser things, that we can't do in Carrara.

There's lots of good sensible, delightful advice [that seems obvious once it's pointed out] like: it makes a difference when you're about to model a sphere into a head which way the "North Pole" points. Different choices, and possibilities follow from whether it's pointed straight up, horizontal [and becomes the mouth] or transverse [North & South become the ears.}

Treats Splines, Polygons, Metaballs and bones. Great book!