Rotation & Euler angles

Rotations in Chapter Vision are plain, continuous degrees on three channels: 720° means two full turns, and your curves never take a shortcut you didn't ask for.

Degrees that keep counting

Each entity's rotation is animated on three channels (rx, ry, rz) stored as continuous Euler degrees, not quaternions. That single choice decides how rotation behaves everywhere in the suite:

Because rotations are continuous degrees…You get
Values aren't wrapped into ±180°A key at 720° really means two full turns, not "back where you started."
Curves interpolate the numbers you keyedMotion never snaps "the short way around" between poses; 350° to 10° travels forward through 360°, unless you keyed it otherwise.
Each axis is an ordinary curveYou shape rotation eases in the graph editor exactly like position or scale.

Quaternion systems always take the shortest arc between two orientations and can never represent more than half a turn per pair of keys. Degrees just keep counting, up or down, past 360 and past 3600, which is exactly what you want for turntables, wheels, and wind-ups.

Live filtering keeps values continuous

When you rotate an entity by hand (the gizmo in Chapter Vision, or the inspector in Chapter Studio), the captured angles could in principle land anywhere ("−170°" and "190°" describe the same pose). Chapter Vision runs a live Euler filter on every capture: it unwinds the incoming angles toward the value the track already evaluates to at that time, choosing the representation nearest your existing curve. Keep dragging past a full turn and the value keeps climbing — 350, 360, 370 — instead of flipping sign. You never have to fix a curve that suddenly jumped 360°.

What rotate order means

Every rotation track carries an explicit rotate order: the sequence in which the three axis rotations are applied, such as XYZ or ZXY. All six orders are supported. The same three numbers produce different final orientations under different orders, because each rotation turns the axes the next one uses.

Practically: the last axis in the order behaves most like a world-aligned turn, and the first behaves most like a turn in the object's own tilted frame. You feel it the moment more than one axis is animated at once: a tilted spinning top reads differently depending on whether tilt or spin is applied first.

Tip. Change the rotate order before you start keying, and pick one that puts your main spin axis where it turns cleanly on its own. For most single-axis work the default order is fine and you never need to think about it.

Multi-turn wind-ups

Because degrees accumulate, multi-revolution moves are just arithmetic:

  1. Key the start. Say ry = 0° at the moment the spin begins.

  2. Key the total travel. Three full clockwise turns later means ry = 1080° (or −1080° for the other direction) at the end time.

  3. Shape the ease. In the graph editor, ease out of the first key slowly and into the last key gently for a wind-up-and-settle; keep it linear for a constant-speed turntable.

Want a fast spin that brakes into a precise landing? Put the landing orientation at your final key and add whole turns (multiples of 360°) to taste. The pose is identical, but the journey isn't.

Why rotations won't flip on you

Two classic rotation headaches largely disappear here. Flipping, where a curve suddenly leaps 360° because two captures picked different representations of the same pose, is prevented at the source by the live Euler filter. And gimbal trouble, where axes align and a clean-looking edit produces a wobble, only becomes a practical concern when you animate large swings on all three axes at once through the middle axis's ±90° region. In normal authoring, spins, tilts, and turns on one or two axes are completely stable.

Watch out. If you do choreograph aggressive three-axis tumbling and see a wobble, don't fight it with more keys. Pick a rotate order that keeps your busiest axis away from the middle slot, and re-key the move.

Recipes for spinning things