rotation question!

When I am trying to get an object to rotate 360 it won’t. It will 180, but if I use two 180 rotations it just swings back and forth not all the way around. What am I doing wrong???

Hello and welcome. Are you trying to animate a 360 degree rotation?
If not, please consider the fact that a circle is composed of 360 degrees.

I want to rotate say a square 360 degrees on any axis. When I hit the Rot button and rotate the object 360 degrees hit the button again nothing?

If you don’t explicitly tell Blender how much to rotate the object, it will take the “shortest” route because it only knows the start and end positions, not how you got there. So if you rotate it in the view 359 degrees & set a key, the program will move it 1 degree in the opposite direction. Use the transform panel (N-key) to enter degrees manually, or edit the IPO curves to get real rotations.

Welcome to the forum.

When you rotate in Blender, you’ll see a dotted line coming from the center of the rotation and connecting to your mouse cursor. Move the mousepointer in a circle, like you’re turning a wheel, around the center of the rotation.

Also, you can hold the Ctrl-key to constrain the rotation to 5-degree increments.

Also, after starting your rotation, you can type in the rotation degree using the numpad.

One other thought on rotation…the closer your mouse is to the point of rotation, the harder it will be to control.

@OBI_Ron:
Good point. If that happens, I just press Esc and restart the rotation with the mousepointer further away from the center of the rotation. (I know you know that but, for those that might not quite get it…)

Thanks for the help!

IPO curves are your friends and not nearly as scary as they look once you understand how to work with them. They are nothing more than graphs of “something versus time”. With a single IPO curve going from 0 to almost 360deg, it’s possible to make your square rotate forever without setting any more keys!