Rick forgot to mention you should NOT rotate the player rig outside the timeline

[Taikonautti]

I applied rotation to the player rig when I first positioned it on the terrain model. This messed up the orientation of the x/y/z axes. Player Rig rotation should be applied only when editing or recording timeline.

My solution for the first key frame:

1. position the player rig to 0,0,0 with no rotation
2. activate timeline recording and the move the player rig to a suitable position and rotate if necessary