Quaternion Rotation vs Angles

Dondec

MistyMist posted an interesting animation problem recently that was solved by changing Quaternion Rotation to Angles.  I've never really understood what that was all about... prevents gimble lock ? 

For all intents and purposes: when do I need Quaternion Rotation vs Angles?

   - Don

WendyLuvsCatz

well I made the mistake of changing it for my camera mid timeline and it borked up all my nicely keyframed camera movements up until then

so don't do that if you use it 

Mistara

lesson learned  lol, no dropdown list option is insignificant

pwiecek

Gimble lock is the condition in which you lose one degree of rotation when two of your axes are aligned. Oddly enough, it occurs in real gimbles as well as rigged cgi models. I thought quaternions were the SOLUTION to gimble lock, not the cause.

Philemo_Carrara

pwiecek said:

Gimble lock is the condition in which you lose one degree of rotation when two of your axes are aligned. Oddly enough, it occurs in real gimbles as well as rigged cgi models. I thought quaternions were the SOLUTION to gimble lock, not the cause.

Actually, it's the solution if you work entirely with quaternions.

The points is that quaternion are not humanly readable. It specifies an axis and an angle around that axis. Here in Carrara, you specify euler angles and it's converted into quaternions. So, when you specify an end rotation, it's the conversion that goes wrong.

 

Dondec

Thanks for the responses, and MistyMist & Fool the humorous advice.

I'm not that used to figure animation to have a feel for which is better, so no clue If/When one choice of Angle might be better than another.  I did run into Gimble Lock maybe once, rotating cameras in a spherical orbit, and if I'm not mistaken you can readjust one of the axisies slightly off the 90 degree mark to fix the issue. Other than that, well there's Fools advice... don't change mid stream and Philemo's comment that I guess Angles are human readable but Quaternions are not.

Thanks everyone

   - Don