Why is it that Uber used rotated bones for bots?

Hello, I've been messing around with the Peewee model and I noticed something quite a while back, the Peewee does not use rotated bones, it's legs and arms use normal up facing bones, so my question is: Why exactly does PA's bots use rotated bones? Is it easier in animating? What?

I think it is actually a problem with the .papa converter. I don't think it is intentional.

I don't believe so. The real weird thing about it is that Uber doesn't use a rotated bones for something like.. the barrel of a tank even though it only aims up an down, yet rotated bones are used for joints on a bots leg that only move up and down.

Either there's a technical reason for it, or Uber just has an odd preference

It's just an issue with the converter. A barrel of a tank is "facing" forward, so the bone is not rotated. Bots' legs and arms are at angles to forward though, and hence their bones match the orientation.

Hm.. Okay then, and what would happen if you edited the bones (Note, not posed them) to be facing upwards, do you think it'd be possible to be exporting, would animations work?

Eh never mind, once you do that you'd need to repostion them in every way, it'd be a time consuming hassle, implying it'd even work.

The issue with the blender papa exporter is ... I can't 3D math. If I could, then rotated bones wouldn't be a problem (as evidence by Uber's method working with rotated bones). Editing or posing makes no difference (although poses aren't exported - animations aren't supported).

What is the problem with 3D math? Maybe someone can help with this?

Super complex 3D math, bones, etc.. :L

Sounds like you need someone who knows a thing or two about linear algebra and vector mathematics. Perhaps even someone who has to deal with such transformations on a regular basis, and may even have found himself re-deriving some of the basic relationships at some point during his PhD for use in quantum mechanical simulations of crystal lattices in reciprocal space.

Sadly I know of no such people who have a lot of free time at the moment. But without looking at things, I'm going to take an educated guess and say that the solution to your problem lies somewhere on this Wikipedia page.

For rotations usually are used quaternions, not euler angles. But most 3D programs use euler. So maybe problem is with calculation from quaternions to euler angles?

http://www.mathworks.com/help/aeroblks/rotationanglestoquaternions.html