I figured it out.
I went and looked at what I did in Java3D. I vauygely remember going through this learning process way abck then…
Even though the model has positoona and orientations applied direvtly to a node, you cant do that and make it work due toi the ordering dependencies.
The implicit ordering is position, then orientation, so you have to make a position node that owns an oprientation node tht in turn owns the nodes geometry and children
Maybe thats the difference between local and world coords?, I use local coords everywhere, and remember doing the same in Java3D, but not having too in jME.
Glad it's playing ball at last though.
Endolf
Maybe.
I also suspect the controlelrs were over-writing each other. I have separate SpatialTramsformers for translation and orientation because thats how my data defines it, but I suspect each was writing the entire matrix.