I know this is a stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway… In the relation constraint, is there anyway of preventing the rotation of an object, when rotating beyond the 360 degrees to flip out? Currently an object has a range of -180 to 180 degrees, but when an object moves beyond 180 degrees, it will flip into negative figures.. Obviously when plotting, the unroll filter will resolve this issue apart from any objects that has damping on it.

Currently any objects that I’m affecting it’s rotation and applying damping via the relation constraint, I have to deal with it in 2 passes, one that deals with the rotation and plot that with the unroll filter and then apply the damping constraint in a second pass..

Is there a way of doing this in one go?

Any insights would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Greg

Is it flipping in the constraint or is it a gimble issue on the object your controlling? Have you checked the rotation order on the objects to see if its that?

I am not sure what kind of system we have setup in the relation but there should not be a limitation of 180 on an object?  Maybe if you post an image of your relation it would also help.

Brad

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now:

Hi Brad,

As far as I can see it’s flipping in the constraint. I’ve attached an example scene if you want to have look at it.
In this scene there are 2 objects, a yellow cube called the sender and a red cube called the receiver..

The receiver is constrained by the sender using a relation constraint. The constraint is very simple, the rotation of the sender is wired to a Damping (3D) which is sent straight to the receiver.  If you rotate the sender beyond 180 degrees you will see the receiver flipping out…

Cheers,

Greg

Sorry Brad,

I seem to have trouble adding any attachments to this forum.

The scene was just 2 markers and a relation constraint, in which one marker was sending this sender its rotation to a Damping (3d) constraint with a value of 50 (value not really important as along as it’s above 0) with the result of the damping wired to the receiver.

Both markers in the relation constraint had their transformations set locally..  If you display the values in the relation constraint, rotating the sender you will see once it moves beyond 180 or -180 in any axis it will flip back to -180 or 180 degrees. Without the damping constraint, it’s not an issue, as the curves will be unrolled when plotted but with the damping constraint it’s something that can’t be solved with the unroll filter, apart from plotting the rotations before applying the damping constraint. Unless there is something obvious I’ve missed out which wouldn’t surprise me :)

Cheers,

Greg

Thanks Brad!

That’s exactly it! Looking at it again it should seem obvious P[Vector] is for positional data R[Vector] is for rotational data, apparently not to me!!!! Thanks again Brad!!!!!

I have problems with this as well. I’m using a live gyro tracker to drive a camera’s rotation in MoBu. And I need to dampen it quite a bit. Using the regular “Number: Damp” on a vector converted to numbers gives me the exact control and feeling I want but when the vector flips from lets say 179.99 to -179.99 I get into trouble as the flip gets damped as well and is very visible!  =)

Using the Damp(Rotation) doesn’t give me the flipping issues but how is it supposed to work? I can’t get the same feeling as with the regular damp. Setting max speed isn’t the way to go and setting max acceleration just gives me this stupid rubber band syndrome =/. The damping parameter just lessens the terrible results from speed and acceleration.

Am I doing this wrong?

Is there another way?

This is so frustrating.... =(