obj rotation about parent empty's y axis

Support Animation and Rigging
1

hi,

i’m new to blender and having trouble with an animation of a cardboard chair that i’m trying to make unfold (transformers style). i’ve modelled and separated the chair into individual objects or parts (in another application), appplied ‘centre new’ and parented those objects to empties aligned with axis’ that i wish to rotate the objects about which are diiferent to the world or absolute coordinates. each obj/part is then parented to the obj/part before it to form something similar to an armature (no experience with this). when i try to rotate the objects/parts i can only seem to do so about the world coordinates and not the relative coordinates of the empty that the objects are parented to.

would this have something to do with ipo delta coordinates?
should i try to use an armature rig?

if anyone could spare the time to respond to these questions, could you please explain in simple terms as sometimes the terminology confuses the hell out of me. the attached image shows a single part (others suppressed) which i’d like to rotate about the parented empty’s y axis and the other image is the complete chair which will fold flat (one day!).

thanks to anyone that can help! :slight_smile:

Attachments



2

I think I understand what your problem is …

After you have rotated the parent empties to the proper position you need to Ctrl-Shift-P to “make parent without inverse” which will rotate your object to the empty’s local rotation . Now you should be able to rotate only along the Y axis of the empty when you hit R,Y Y to make it rotate on its local Y axis .

It might also help you if you turn on the transform manipulator (Ctrl-Space) and select rotation as well as set the transform orientation (Alt-Space) to local .

Hope this helps .