Local Rotation + Blender 2.5

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I am trying to create a simple animation of an asteroid rotating. I want the rotation to be at a slight angle. Imagine watching the earth rotate from a perspective where you could see the north pole.

The following this procedure does not work for me, but might explain what I am trying to do:

  1. Place Asteroid (or cude) at origin
  2. make sure rotation for x,y, and z are at 0 globally.
  3. switch to local rotation
  4. using the rotation tool (the sphere looking thing) drag x to about 45
  5. drag y to about 45
  6. create keyframe for rotation
  7. move time to frame 10
  8. hit ‘r’
  9. hit ‘z’ twice so I can enter a local rotation of 180.
  10. create keyframe.
  11. At frame 1 and 10 the asteroid has the rotation I want.
  12. drag time line between 1…9 observe the unwanted wobble in the rotation.

maybe another way to ask this is: How do I create a rotation animation around an arbitrary axis?

Much thanks for any and all help.
P.S. I am not a total noob, but I don’t do this sort of thing for a living… so talking to me as a noob is probably a safe bet:D

-Lucas

2

Create the rotation in world space, then parent your object to an empty and rotate the empty to the angle you want.
Demo: Keyframed a rotation of a sphere. In the graph editor made the rotation linear and added a modifier to make the rotation constant. Then parented the sphere to an empty and rotate the empty. The sphere is still rotating in its world space but the empty has rotated its world. http://www.screencast.com/users/blenderwho/folders/Jing/media/87de8f0a-f173-4a9c-882b-df9df3f1dc40

3

I see. The child object’s coordinates are relative to its parent. (and the empty is relative to the world.) So do the basic Z axis rotation animation on the desired object (asteroid/sphere) and then changing the parent (empty) object’s rotation to the desired angle.

Thanks!
-Lucas