I'm having an issue with aim constraints. In the image below are two gun turrets: one on top of the ship and one on the bottom. I went ahead and grouped all the items in the turret which would have up/down rotation and placed a constraint on them (ensuring that the center of rotation was correct for the group). I quickly verified that this worked by moving the locater, I linked them to, up and down. Everything appeared to be working correctly. Then I grouped everything that would rotate side to side and made sure the pivot was in the center. I made an aim constraint on the same locater that only moved in this axis. A quick side to side test verified that it was working (or so it seemed).

The problem is that when I move the locater toward the rear of the ship the turret moves in an unpredictable manner. The 180 degrees in front behave exactly as I want but the 180 degrees behind don't work.

Even more odd is the fact that I duplicated the same steps on the lower turret and I don't end up with the same issue. It has 360 degrees of movement that works as expected.

I created a sensor dish toward the rear of the ship (also on the upper side) with similar movement requirements as the upper turret. After following the same process, I run into the same issue as the upper turret.

In the help file (yeah, I actually checked it) I found a vague reference that said something about aim constraints acting unpredictable when the target nears the global up axis. I have no idea what this means or how to fix it. Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on?

Note: History on each item is deleted and translations are frozen. I'm using Maya 6.5