Choices of 3D rotation in unreal. which one? Gimbal lock?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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1

Hey there.

I’ve finally found time to reopen this little treasure trove of nightmares.
Goal - I want to be able to control the rotation of my character with a single axis mouse movement.
Eg. a 360 backflip. A 360 on 2 axes creating a kind of athletic style 360 flip controlled with simply a single axis.

Using blueprints, we don’t really have access to quartions, so I’m open to weird or hacky options
( I’m awful at code and would take me a long time to figure out even basic code, but I’m up for it).

Options I’m currently thinking about.

  1. Fake it using 90 degree increments, every 90 degrees adjust for the Euler angle and lerp between position until the 360 flip is done?

  2. Animate in something like blender. Import it and then scrub using the animation using for eg. the Y axis?

  3. give control of the Y axis for the rotation, and then course correct the other 2 rotations every 90 degrees to give the impression of rotation?

  4. I use the face towards node, make a invisible ball orbit the character for the Y axis (You control the ball) and then manually adjust the other axis to create the rotation?

I’ll be adding options as I get or think about them.

If anyone has any ideas on how to control rotation dynamically. Every link is purple now xD. I feel like I’m exhausting the internet of ideas. :cry:

Thanks :slight_smile:

Edit: Currently Im going with option 1 with potentially a bit of 3.

2

Use root motion animations. Then (hopefully possible) use motion matching plugin to blend and animate. If it works you can trigger backflip just by moving character (capsule) right way.

Download “Game Animation Sample Project” and watch tutorials on GASP and Motion Matching System (both refer to same stuff, just some people do it wrong).

It is great plugin/system, it has multiple root motion animations, however it does NOT have backflips etc.

But there are packs on marketplace/fab that have it (lot of them at some point were free, and probably some are free now).

When you do above, search how to make realtime retargetting (to have your character use UEFN animation blueprints) and how to retarget animations to UEFN skeleton. Those are two different things.

  • realtime retargetting allows you to use UE4, UE5, mixamo etc skeletons
  • animation retargetting allows you to have single animation blueprint that can animate other skeletons. Like motion matching that uses UEFN skeleton, but you can import older animations and retarget them to uefn. So like opposite to realtime retargeting,

And best way to do some parkour etc now is that motion matching plugin.

3

Thanks for the reply and information. I’ll write down all the stuff I don’t understand and start researching.

I do Have hopefully a quick question.

If gimbal lock is essentially a hierarchy, And its sitting assuambly at XYZ.

Is there anywhere I can just change the rotation order? I think I could solve this by reordering it?

4

Another option I’m thinking about maybe is creating 3 orbs that orbit the player, they have equal offset and position in the XYZ manner.

I control ORB Y for eg. and the rest stay within offset of it. the character faces after the orbs and the rotation itself is solved. the orbs wont need rotation. they just need to orbit the character sphere.

Genius xD