Arms and legs

I came across a really REALLY frustrating problem over the weekend while trying to finish my animation mentor homework. Gimble... nuff said.

My personal method of avoiding gimble is to try and keep all the rotation values under 100. Having 1 axis go over is fine, but any more than that it becomes a problem. So in blocking, it's essential to keep an eye on the rotation values. And TURN ON GIMBLE DISPLAY MODE. All the other rotation displays (local or global) lie. Gimble shows exactly what is happening and when two axis become gimbled. Also, zeroing out the values constantly helps too, if things become confused. This works well with arms and legs.

Second, and probably should be considered first before starting blocking, is to think about what direction the character is facing most of the time, so you wont have to rotate the hands and feet to compensate.

Third, work out what the rotation order before starting. What is it? If you turn on gimble display mode (double click on the rotate icon in Maya, the attribute editor pops up and check the gimble option) and rotate each axis one by one, you'll see what moves what. The axis that moves a second axis to match the third, is the one you should move last.

The key is to keep it clean, and think it through before starting. I was in a rush two weeks ago and now I'm paying for it with gimble all over the place. I wish I could start again.