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
Update:
OK not genius. Even with Something else controlling it and leaving the character to use unreals engine instead of my maths, still suffers from gimbal lock. Makes sense I guess, Its an 3D issue not a control issue… sighhhh.
Sigh sigh sigh how the hell did ssx tricky and steep and every snowboard game, every aeroplane game get around this. It feels simply so easy to be this difficult.