OK, I’ve been through as much documentation as I can find, and I’ve searched through this site (for the better part of 3 hours) for an answer but haven’t found one… yet…
I have a mechanical leg here with a total of 4 joints (4 seperate objects). Parenting works great… when I rotate the parent all the children move with it as well, great… the problem is that I need each child to rotate only at the same axis plane that its parent is on.
I did something remarkably similar in Cinema 4D, where for each object I could define specific axis points. I set the axis to let the object know what was x,y and z based solely on the rotation of the parent…because the parent determined the initial rotation of the child.
Hope I’m making myself clear
Here’s what I may or may not be asking:
Is there a way to restrict the rotation of an object locally?
Can I preset rotation limitations on an object?
I hope I am understanding your problem correctly. Before you do the parenting of your various pieces make their local axis all have the same orientation.
Then to rotate the individual pieces and their children you would for instance “rzz” (rotate the piece about the local z axis) which is the same as the main parents z axis – all pieces therefore remain in plane. I hope that this is what you were looking for.
PLace the 3d cursor where you want the new center to be. Then while in object mode with your object selected press the “center cursor” button in the mesh panel.
