Why is my animation not keeping location and rotation correctly? I am currently 3d modeling a twisty puzzle and trying to animate it. I have the puzzle done but when I try to animate it, it randomly twists and turns the individual objects in different directions before converging back to their original form at the end of the animation.

The screencast of me attempting to animate this is here: https://youtu.be/FiPcvhNzosk

File at the end of the screencast:



This is the original file. Just delete the 2 keyframes that are there:



I did make this with a tutorial. It is by rcpongo and I have very slightly edited his design. All credit goes to him for my design.
I found the answer after finding another similar post earlier. The post mentioned a local axis. I checked this on the pieces and found they did not have the same local x axis. I applied the rotation and it now works. How to fix this:


Select the pieces.
Press R,X,X> Move Mouse
If they rotate in different directions then the local x axes are different.
Select all the affected pieces and press Ctrl+A
Left click "rotation"
That should fix other problems that are experienced.