There’s this frustrating problem I’m having with my character rig that I have not been able to find a solution for. Keep in mind that I am new to rigging so this can be a rookie mistake. I will try to explain it to the best of my abilities. It seems that I cannot upload the scene file for some reason, but I will keep trying to do so. So I’m doing a simple animation with my rig. I just want the character to raise his arm in front of him. So I set one key in the beginning, rotate the arm up, and set one last key at the end. The problem is that instead of the arm just rotating straight up, it rotates in an arch-like fashion to its final destination. I hope I explained that clearly. If anyone can help me out I will greatly appreciate it, thanks.

False alarm. I think I fixed the problem. It seems that when I rotate the bones in gimbal actually prevents the weird rotating. Before I was rotating the bones using the view option.

Changing to Gimble will not correct the problem, it will show you where the problem is and maybe you can try to avoid it but the problem is still there. The issue is Gimble lock and it happens with any object in any software that is using Euler angles for rotation. Since Euler angles are the preceded method for animators you need to learn to minimize where it will happen during the rigging process and then learn how to deal with it as an animator when it is unavoidable.

Paul Neale
PEN Productions Inc.
penproductions.ca / paulneale.com
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