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Emulating a tripod with rotation axis order

Emulating a tripod with rotation axis order - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2025 Essential Training

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Emulating a tripod with rotation axis order

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- In the previous movie, we saw the importance of using gimbal coordinate system when rotating a free camera. Now let's go a little bit deeper and talk about rotation axis order. That will allow us to emulate the mechanics of a real-world tripod. Gimbal mode accurately represents the complex interaction of rotational axes. These are what's known as Euler angle rotations, E-U-L-E-R, named after the mathematician who developed the system. The three rotation axes are calculated sequentially in a particular order. That results in a kind of inheritance in which the orientation of the rotational axes depend upon one another. To illustrate, I'll select the camera and choose the rotate tool, and I'm in gimbal reference coordinate system. If I rotate around a particular axis, the other axes may or may not inherit that rotation depending upon the rotation priority. For example, if I go over to the perspective view and rotate around the gimbal Y axis, we will see that the red axis is following…

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