Rotating objects in world and local space in THREE.js. This had me a little stumped today, as over a succession of revisions, method names relating to matrix rotations have changed, therefore many snipets and suggestions online no longer work. The following should do the trick… link to gist

//following two rotation functions are updated versions of code from: https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/issues/1219
//updated to work in latest versions (r52 tested) of THREE.js

// Rotate an object around an axis in object space
var rotationMatrix
function rotateAroundObjectAxis( object, axis, radians ) {
rotationMatrix = new THREE.Matrix4();
rotationMatrix.makeRotationAxis( axis.normalize(), radians );
object.matrix.multiplySelf( rotationMatrix ); // post-multiply
object.rotation.setEulerFromRotationMatrix(object.matrix, object.order);
}

// Rotate an object around an axis in world space (the axis passes through the object's position)
var rotWorldMatrix;
function rotateAroundWorldAxis( object, axis, radians ) {
rotWorldMatrix = new THREE.Matrix4();
rotWorldMatrix.makeRotationAxis(axis.normalize(), radians);
rotWorldMatrix.multiplySelf(object.matrix); // pre-multiply
object.matrix = rotWorldMatrix;
object.rotation.setEulerFromRotationMatrix(object.matrix, object.order);
}