CompuServe Messages

Title: Camera flips 180 degrees; Workaround for Gimbal lock… Description: Tthe 3D Studio camera will occasionally appear to turn everything upside down, as if the camera has been suddenly flipped 180 degrees. The view in the camera viewport will suddenly display images that are upside down and the camera does not have any keyframe information which would explain this flip. The workaround for this is simple. In the keyframer, link everything in your scene to a dummy object on frame 0. Rotate the dummy object 90 degrees. This will shift the entire animation to an orientation in which the camera will never pass over a singularity at the poles. Note: This singularity is an artifact of quaternion mathematics which was originally developed in the 1800's. All high end animation systems use this form of math for smooth keyframe motion. Quaternion mathematics is discussed in John Vince's book, 3D-Computer Animation, published by Addison-Wesley.