How to make something rotate at an angle using parenting, constraints or drivers?

Can anyone help with making a wheel rotate on an axis at an angle different from the XYZ?

I can 't remember how to do it if I ever knew and can’t see it explained anywhere

Parent the wheel to an empty and rotate the empty to the different angle

Thanks Richard, but it just spins around on the Z axis in this case.

It has to turn on the wheels axis which is n’t one of the set XYZW axis, and be related to other events.

Example attached

Show us exactly what you want

Attachments

off_axis_rotate.blend (118 KB)

Thanks. Yes that works.

I wonder why I could n’t get it to do that before? Perhaps it has to be at the centre of the object.

Ah! Its stopped working again!

With the empty exactly copying the angle of the wheel how do you instruct it to rotate? Because to do it by hand you have to double click to select the right axis?

Also if you add another double to act as Object for a driver the wheel jumps around and the driver doesn’t work!

Thanks Richard :slight_smile: It helped me.

The problem speaks for itself but where is the answer?

The problem speaks for itself
But you have supplied no blend file to review !!! Don’t be so shy.

Ok. Its from a Blendswap. I have just wireframed and deleted all the rest as there was quite a bit .
I had only moved the parts to layer two so that they could easily be worked on. Its was 2.72b I was using.
Rotation problem.blend (920 KB)

Your problem is your local axis is tilted. If you want to keep it that way, you can just use a transformation constraint, which will convert a global rotation of the empty, to a LOCAL rotation of the wheel.
Otherwise, if the axis of the wheel were aligned with the global axis, you could parent an empty to the wheel, and then rotate that empty toput the wheel in position, and then rotate the wheel over the z axis. When the wheelis rotated on the z axis, only the z coordinates should change in the transformation.
See the blend for the two ways of doing this. I cleaned the axis on the right.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34554
Done.

Thanks Starplayer. That looks like its done it.

OH!

No it has n’t quite done it!

The real problem was the wheel kept jumping to another angle or axis when it was parented.

The model is a blendswap which has been ’ used ’ since downloading so nothing is in position as it was, and all the components had been parented to an empty so that they could be moved and animated.

Now when the front wheels are given a Driver or a Transform Constraint they jump to another position.

Why do they do that??

There must be some property making the wheel move when a driver is added?

Without being able to stop it the only solution is to make another one from a new cube?!

mate, post the new .blend…

I can’t up load it. I don’t know why it is 10 MB but perhaps that’s why it wont up load?

Yes, that’s why. Post it to pasteall:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/

It took a long time to up load but…

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/34842

Ahh ha!

I have gotten it to work!

But not in quite the right way I think. After making a new wheel in a separate blend file I found that if the rotation is set at Y rotation
it will then rotate around in the x axis.

I don’t understand why. The controlling cube could be set in the X or Y direction without any difference to the wheel as long as its rotation is called Y but in fact was around the red X line.

Your Objects have not applied Rotations and Scales. This causes “jumps” when drivers are added.
Using Decimate modifier - Unsubdivide, 2 Iterations on all objects would bring total file size to 1Mb if Compressed option on T-panel is used during Save.