Limit Rotation Local Space Not Working

Question

I am creating an airplane 3d model and I am rigging the wing flaps.

I am using Object Constraints to rig the flaps. I have added an empty as the Rig Controller, and have rotated the Empty so that it rotates the flap on the correct angle.

If I rotate the empty on the Local X, it rotates alright. But I want to make it so that the empty has limited rotation so you can only rotate it a certain amount before it stops. I have the flaps object parented to the empty, so that it moves along with the empty. I added a Limit Rotation to the Empty, but when I do so, the flap seems to flip upside down. When I change the Owner Space to, Local Space, it fixes that problem. But when I do that, the Limit rotation seems to completely stop working.

I also want to rig the entire airplane to a Master Controller, so that I can animate the airplane as a hole. But when I parent the Flaps Rig to the entire airplane controller, the flaps and empty change shape and get all stretched out, and move to another place.

This topic is a little bit hard to explain in words, so I have added Photos, as well as a Link to a video I created, showing the problem as well. Please See Below.

If anyone can help me out, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Here is the video, so that you can better understand the Problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpsD-PSk24Q

Answer 1

About your second problem, I could not reproduce it with the file you’ve shared, but maybe apply the scale (even though it should not scale the child when you parent)?

About your flap :

First thing, you were animating the rotation of the empty, but as it is not aligned with the global orientation anymore you may have bad rotation results : Rotations, once keyframed, do not consider the object’s own local orientation but the global orientation. So when you are supposed to animate an object that is not aligned with the global axis, the solution, before desaligning the object from the world orientation, is to parent it to an empty (or any other object), then orientate the empty the way you want in your scene, then animate the object, not the empty. As the object is parented to an empty, its new global orientation is not the world anymore, it is the parent local space, so any keyframed rotation will happen on the parent's local axis, if the parent is orientated the way you want in the 3D scene, the child object will rotate the way you want relatively to the world space.

This is also why your Limit Rotation constraint on local space didn’t work: Local Space will consider the object’s parent local space, but the empty has no parent, so the constraint won’t affect it. You need to give the constraint to the flap.

So, to fix the problem:

• In Edit mode align the flap with the global orientation, and put its origin on its axis position:

• Parent it to an empty:

• Move and rotate the empty until it fits to the wing:

• Give a Limit Rotation/Local Space to the flap (not to the empty):

• Open the N panel, animate the flap on the X axis: