Reply To: Fixing object orientation/parent to allow proper animation
>If the wiper blade has its Z axis pointing up through that connection,
“Aye, there’s the rub!” It didn’t point up through the connection after I moved the origin; it pointed to True North. I thought about that for a while and decided to try selecting more of the connection’s geometry than just the outside of the base. I Selected>Linked to select the whole connector, and the z-axis lined up perfectly through the center of the connector! <applause>.
I figured I should try to create a custom orientation at this point, but I discovered this very nice Orient to Selection button in the Transformation Orientation drop-down. 😀 So things aligned and the origin stayed at the base where it belongs.
I tried face snapping while moving the wiper object in Grab mode and using the Move tool, but it was not cooperating. I tried changing the snapping settings to Closest, Center, Median and Active, but the wiper kept snapping at an unexpected angle to the face (Align Rotation to Target checked), or snapping to things far away that didn’t make any sense. I finally tried what you suggested, even though I don’t need the exact center of the face:
>If you need it to be 100% exactly to the center of that face, snap the cursor to the face first and then snap the object to the cursor.
Here is the Local result. Local z rotation works perfectly. Global and animated z rotation were problematic (more on this later)
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Once the wiper was in position and the z-axis rotation working correctly, I applied my rotation transformations. After that, scrubbing the z rotation value caused the wiper to rotate around True North(!). <panic> After undoing, I tried applying rotation to deltas, which got me what I wanted. I have absolutely no idea why that worked.
Google gave me another suggestion, which was to *not* apply my rotation transforms, but instead switch the rotation mode to ZXY Euler from XYZ Euler. That also worked, and the logic is a little more clear to me than the delta transforms. But now my wiper rotation values for X and Y are 15.974 and -48.523. (I guess I should write those down, eh?) 😀