For whatever reason, I cannot rotate a particular object beyond 360 degrees – it will jump back down to 0 degrees. In a different Blender project, I have an object where I can rotate it far beyond 360 degrees:
Both objects in both projects are set to XYZ Euler. I imagine there’s some setting that I’m missing, but I’m not sure what it is. Any ideas?
Never mind – I figured it out. I guess to get values that are 360 degrees or more, you need to manually enter them in the N panel. If you simply enter R (rotate), Z (axis), then a large number over 360 degrees (which is what I was doing), the number in the N panel will be set to 0-360 degrees.
Why would you have a need to go over 360 degrees? 0 degrees and 360 degrees are the same thing.
If I want to set keyframes to animate something spinning (like a top on its axis), I need to go beyond 360 degrees.
You can do one rotation, then use the graph editor to make that rotation repeat endlessly.
This is where you find it in the graph editor:
I believe the “snap back” when the object jumps from 360 degrees back to 0 will affect motion blur, even if the movement isn’t visible on an integer frame.
Good point about the motion blur. Also, I usually want to have some sort of custom Bezier curve over the life of the action so the rotation speeds up or slows down near the beginning and/or end of the rotation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think repeating an action in the graph would allow me to do that.
You don’t need to go beyond 360 degrees to do that, so you’re question should really be is “how do I spin this object?”
Thanks for the input. I don’t normally animate, so I didn’t know about the motion blur issue with that modifier, and I suppose it wouldn’t be the best way to repeat if you want to have curve control across the entire duration of the spin.
No, I think the issue was something like he knew an automated method wouldn’t be good enough for him (he might have animation experience from another app). He wants to have more nuanced control over the spin animation. In that case, the best solution I can think of would be to manually enter the amount it will spin for into the n-panel.