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[Iulian81]

Hi! I try to spin a ball like a planet, around its vertical axis so I watched a video tutorial on Internet but there says we can use the Y orientation parameters so after 4 seconds of animation we change it to 90 degrees after 8 second we change the orientation of the ball to 180 and so on... I tried that but the ball just simply run in circle around a close imaginary point...  ... so instead of doing a spin it just does close circles... I can't imagine why just I can't take that ball and spin it with the mouse or something...

[RudySchneider]

Iulian81 ---
Anim8or is a very simplistic modeling and animation tool.  In scene mode, for instance, motion is produced by keying it to a frame or multiple frames, creating "snap-shots" of the motion.  You actually have a lot of control, but it requires a bit of work, and to produce a continuous spin means you have to insert successive keyframes repeatedly.  Some 3D applications can do this automatically.  Anim8or doesn't have that ability inherently, but there may be a script that allows it.

It seems that what you're expecting is something approaching a physics engine, which interprets an input and applies real-world physical reactions.  Only high-end, and expensive 3D packages have that capability.  

Play around some more with Anim8or.  For a free bit of software, it's actually quite capable, once you know some of the tricks.

[hihosilver]

One thing to make sure of is that you have your object centered in object mode.  If the axis of the object is not centered, then it will not spin perfectly and will seem to spin while making small circles.

[Iulian81]

So how to center an object?

[Iulian81]

I found Edit-locate-center about origin... this is the command? And by the way! What is the origin? 0-0-0 parameters?

[RudySchneider]

Yes, Edit > Locate about origin is the correct command to center an object in Anim8or's Cartesian coordinate system.  Be careful, though, because it calculates the center of the object based on its geometry.  Hence, a triangle (or pyramid) won't actually be centered based on its actual centroid.  That's not a problem for a sphere, naturally, since its centroid is equidistant to all points on its surface.

A 3-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system references everything to the origin, the location where the X-, Y, and Z-axes intersect.  And yes, the origin is located at 0, 0, 0, and everything is measured in plus or minus directions along those cardinal axes.  It really helps if you have a fundamental understanding of this concept, and geometry and trigionometry can help a lot, too!