3rd person camera implemenation borks animation playback

Tried to create an external 3rd person sideways camera. Had lots of problems with using the camera object (as well as the AdvancedCamera resource, it does not work) as it seems that the camera object is only used when it is set as the control object (useful??). As a solution to that I tried to change the getRenderEyeTransform function that is used to render the scene by creating another function called getRenderCameraTransform and use that one instead of getRenderEyeTransform in ShapeBase::getCameraTransform and modify the rotation and location of the render caption. Setting the character up as the control object seems to mess up the animation sequence of our character. When the Camera is set as a control object instead of the character, our character's animation runs correctly, when our character (with the changed render function) is the control object, the animation gets scewed. Here's what I did in getRenderCameraTransform (red text is code I changed):

void Player::getRenderCameraTransform( MatrixF* mat )
{
   MatrixF pmat,xmat,zmat;
   xmat.set(EulerF(mHead.x, 0.0f, 0.0f));
   zmat.set(EulerF(0.0f, 0.0f, mHead.z-1.5));
   pmat.mul(zmat,xmat);

   F32 *dp = pmat;
   F32* sp;
   if( mDataBlock->cameraNode != -1 )
   {
      sp = mShapeInstance->mNodeTransforms[mDataBlock->cameraNode];
   }
   else
   {
      Point3F center;
      mObjBox.getCenter(&center);
      MatrixF eyeMat(true);
      eyeMat.setPosition(center);

      sp = eyeMat;
   }

   const Point3F& scale = getScale();
   dp[3] = sp[3] * scale.x+7;
   dp[7] = sp[7] * scale.y+1;
   dp[11] = sp[11] * scale.z;
   mat->mul(getRenderTransform(), pmat);
}

Even only changing the y offset (to see the character from behind) shows that the animation is crooked, but only when the character is the control object.

Here is an image of the problem. See how the feet seem to detach? In Showtools, this place perfectly (ankles stay connected and she seems to just be breathing heavily)