I'm currently in the process of finishing the implementation for a camera that functions in the same way as the camera in Maya. The part I'm stuck in the tumble functionality.
The problem is the following: the tumble feature works fine so long as the position of the camera is not parallel with the up vector (currently defined to be (0, 1, 0)). As soon as the camera becomes parallel with this vector (so it is looking straight up or down), the camera locks in place and will only rotate around the up vector instead of continuing to roll.
This question has already been asked here, unfortunately there is no actual solution to the problem. For reference, I also tried updating the up vector as I rotated the camera, but the resulting behaviour is not what I require (the view rolls as a result of the new orientation).
Here's the code for my camera:
using namespace glm;
// point is the position of the cursor in screen coordinates from GLFW
float deltaX = point.x - mImpl->lastPos.x;
float deltaY = point.y - mImpl->lastPos.y;
// Transform from screen coordinates into camera coordinates
Vector4 tumbleVector = Vector4(-deltaX, deltaY, 0, 0);
Matrix4 cameraMatrix = lookAt(mImpl->eye, mImpl->centre, mImpl->up);
Vector4 transformedTumble = inverse(cameraMatrix) * tumbleVector;
// Now compute the two vectors to determine the angle and axis of rotation.
Vector p1 = normalize(mImpl->eye - mImpl->centre);
Vector p2 = normalize((mImpl->eye + Vector(transformedTumble)) - mImpl->centre);
// Get the angle and axis
float theta = 0.1f * acos(dot(p1, p2));
Vector axis = cross(p1, p2);
// Rotate the eye.
mImpl->eye = Vector(rotate(Matrix4(1.0f), theta, axis) * Vector4(mImpl->eye, 0));
The vector library I'm using is GLM. Here's a quick reference on the custom types used here:
typedef glm::vec3 Vector;
typedef glm::vec4 Vector4;
typedef glm::mat4 Matrix4;
typedef glm::vec2 Point2;
mImpl is a PIMPL that contains the following members:
Vector eye, centre, up;
Point2 lastPoint;
Here is what I think. It has something to do with the gimbal lock, that occurs with euler angles (and thus spherical coordinates).
If you exceed your minimal(0, -zoom,0) or maxima(0, zoom,0) you have to toggle a boolean. This boolean will tell you if you must treat deltaY positive or not.
It could also just be caused by a singularity, therefore just limit your polar angle values between 89.99° and -89.99°.
Your problem could be solved like this.
So if your camera is exactly above (0, zoom,0) or beneath (0, -zoom,0) of your object, than the camera only rolls.
(I am also assuming your object is at (0,0,0) and the up-vector is set to (0,1,0).)
There might be some mathematical trick to resolve this, I would do it with linear algebra though.
You need to introduce a new right-vector. If you make a cross product, you will get the camera-vector. Camera-vector = up-vector x camera-vector. Imagine these vectors start at (0,0,0), then easily, to get your camera position just do this subtraction (0,0,0)-(camera-vector).
So if you get some deltaX, you rotate towards the right-vector(around the up-vector) and update it.
Any influence of deltaX should not change your up-vector.
If you get some deltaY you rotate towards the up-vector(around the right-vector) and update it. (This has no influence on the right-vector).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_matrix at Rotation matrix from axis and angle you can find a important formula.
You say u is your vector you want to rotate around and theta is the amount you want to pivot. The size of theta is proportional to deltaX/Y.
For example: We got an input from deltaX, so we rotate around the up-vector.
up-vector:= (0,1,0)
right-vector:= (0,0,-1)
cam-vector:= (0,1,0)
theta:=-1*30° // -1 due to the positive mathematical direction of rotation
R={[cos(-30°),0,-sin(-30°)],[0,1,0],[sin(-30°),0,cos(-30°)]}
new-cam-vector=R*cam-vector // normal matrix multiplication
One thing is left to be done: Update the right-vector.
right-vector=camera-vector x up-vector .
Related
I am trying to rotate a "cube" full of little cubes using keyboard which works but not so great.
I am struggling with setting the pivot point of rotation to the very center of the big "cube" / world. As you can see on this video, center of front (initial) face of the big cube is the pivot point for my rotation right now, which is a bit confusing when I rotate the world a little bit.
To explain it better, it looks like I am moving initial face of the cube when using keys to rotate the cube. So the pivot point might be okay from this point of view, but what is wrong in my code? I don't understand why it is moving by front face, not the entire cube by its very center?
In case of generating all little cubes, I call a function in 3 for loops (x, y, z) and the function returns cubeMat so I have all cubes generated as you can see on the video.
cubeMat = scale(cubeMat, {0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f});
cubeMat = translate(cubeMat, {positioning...);
For rotation itself, a short example of rotation to left looks like this:
mat4 total_rotation; //global variable - never resets
mat4 rotation; //local variable
if(keysPressed[GLFW_KEY_LEFT]){
timer -= delta;
rotation = rotate(mat4{}, -delta, {0, 1, 0});
}
... //rest of key controls
total_rotation *= rotation;
And inside of those 3 for cycles is also this:
program.setUniform("ModelMatrix", total_rotation * cubeMat);
cube.render();
I have read that I should use transformation to set the pivot point to the middle but in this case, how can I set the pivot point inside of little cube which is in center of world? That cube is obviously x=2, y=2, z=2 since in for cycles, I generate cubes starting at x=0.
You are accumulating the rotation matrices by right-multiplication. This way, all rotations are performed in the local coordinate systems that result from all previous transformations. And this is why your right-rotation results in a turn after an up-rotation (because it is a right-rotation in the local coordinate system).
But you want your rotations to be in the global coordinate system. Thus, simply revert the multiplication order:
total_rotation = rotation * total_rotation;
I'm trying to implement a quaternion-based camera, but when moving around the X and Y axis, the camera produces an unwanted roll on the Z axis. I want to be able to look around freely on all axis.
I've read other topics about this problem (for example: http://www.flipcode.com/forums/thread/6525 ), but I'm not getting what is meant by "Fix this by continuously rebuilding the rotation matrix by rotating around the WORLD axis, i.e around <1,0,0>, <0,1,0>, <0,0,1>, not your local coordinates, whatever they might be."
//Camera.hpp
glm::quat rotation;
//Camera.cpp
void Camera::rotate(glm::vec3 vec)
{
glm::quat paramQuat = glm::quat(vec);
rotation = paramQuat * rotation;
}
I call the rotate function like this:
cam->rotate(glm::vec3(0, 0.5, 0));
This must have to do with local/world coordinates, right? I'm just not getting it, since I thought quaternions are always based on each other (thus a quaternion can't be in "world" or "local" space?).
Also, should i use more than one quaternion for a camera?
As far as I understand it, and from looking at the code you provided, what they mean is that you shouldn't store and apply the rotation incrementally by applying rotate on the rotation quat all the time, but instead keeping track of two quaternions for each axis (X and Y in world space) and calculating the rotation vector as the product of those.
[edit: some added (pseudo)code]
// Camera.cpp
void Camera::SetRotation(glm::quat value)
{
rotation = value;
}
// controller.cpp --> probably a place where you'd want to translate user input and store your rotational state
xAngle += deltaX;
yAngle += deltaY;
glm::quat rotationX = QuatAxisAngle(X_AXIS, xAngle);
glm::quat rotationY = QuatAxisAngle(Y_AXIS, yAngle);
camera.SetRotation(rotationX * rotationY);
I have a 3D object in DirectX11 with a position vector and a rotation angle for the direction it's facing (it only rotates around the Y axis).
D3DXVECTOR3 m_position;
float m_angle;
If I then wanted to rotate the object to face something then I'd need to find the angle between the direction it's facing and the direction it needs to face using the dot product on the two normalised vectors.
The thing I'm having a problem with is how I find the direction the object is currently facing with just its position and the angle. What I currently have is:
D3DXVECTOR3 normDirection, normTarget;
D3DXVec3Normalize( &normDirection, ????);
D3DXVec3Normalize( &normTarget, &(m_position-target));
// I store the values in degrees because I prefer it
float angleToRotate = D3DXToDegree( acos( D3DXVec3Dot( &normDirection, &normTarget)));
Does anyone know how I get the vector for the current direction it's facing from the values I have, or do I need to re-write it so I keep track of the object's direction vector?
EDIT: Changed 'cos' to 'acos'.
SOLUTION (with the assistance of user2802841):
// assuming these are member variables
D3DXVECTOR3 m_position;
D3DXVECTOR3 m_rotation;
D3DXVECTOR3 m_direction;
// and these are local variables
D3DXVECTOR3 target; // passed in as a parameter
D3DXVECTOR3 targetNorm;
D3DXVECTOR3 upVector;
float angleToRotate;
// find the amount to rotate by
D3DXVec3Normalize( &targetNorm, &(target-m_position));
angleToRotate = D3DXToDegree( acos( D3DXVec3Dot( &targetNorm, &m_direction)));
// calculate the up vector between the two vectors
D3DXVec3Cross( &upVector, &m_direction, &targetNorm);
// switch the angle to negative if the up vector is going down
if( upVector.y < 0)
angleToRotate *= -1;
// add the rotation to the object's overall rotation
m_rotation.y += angleToRotate;
If you store the orientation as an angle then you must assume some kind of default orientation when angle is 0, express that default orientation as a vector (like (1.0, 0.0, 0.0) if you assume x+ direction to be the default), then rotate that vector by your angle degrees (either directly with sin/cos or by using rotation matrix created by one of the D3DXMatrixRotation* functions) and the resulting vector will be your current direction.
EDIT:
In answer to your comment, you can determine rotation direction like this. Which in your case translates to something like (untested):
D3DXVECTOR3 cross;
D3DXVec3Cross(&cross, &normDirection, &normTarget);
float dot;
D3DXVec3Dot(&dot, &cross, &normal);
if (dot < 0) {
// angle is negative
} else {
// angle is positive
}
Where normal is most likely a (0, 1, 0) vector (because you said your objects rotate around Y axis).
if, as you say, 0 degrees == (0,0,1) you can use:
normDirection = ( sin( angle ), 0, cos( angle ) )
because rotation is always around y axis.
You will have to change the sign of sin(angle) depending on your system (left handed or right handed).
So I am currently trying to create a function that will take two 3D points A and B, and provide me with the quaternion representing the rotation required of point A to be "looking at" point B (such that point A's local Z axis passes through point B, if you will).
I originally found this post, the top answer of which seemed to provide me with a good starting point. I went on to implement the following code; instead of assuming a default (0, 0, -1) orientation, as the original answer suggests, I try to extract a unit vector representing the actual orientation of the camera.
void Camera::LookAt(sf::Vector3<float> Target)
{
///Derived from pseudocode found here:
///https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13014973/quaternion-rotate-to
//Get the normalized vector from the camera position to Target
sf::Vector3<float> VectorTo(Target.x - m_Position.x,
Target.y - m_Position.y,
Target.z - m_Position.z);
//Get the length of VectorTo
float VectorLength = sqrt(VectorTo.x*VectorTo.x +
VectorTo.y*VectorTo.y +
VectorTo.z*VectorTo.z);
//Normalize VectorTo
VectorTo.x /= VectorLength;
VectorTo.y /= VectorLength;
VectorTo.z /= VectorLength;
//Straight-ahead vector
sf::Vector3<float> LocalVector = m_Orientation.MultVect(sf::Vector3<float>(0, 0, -1));
//Get the cross product as the axis of rotation
sf::Vector3<float> Axis(VectorTo.y*LocalVector.z - VectorTo.z*LocalVector.y,
VectorTo.z*LocalVector.x - VectorTo.x*LocalVector.z,
VectorTo.x*LocalVector.y - VectorTo.y*LocalVector.x);
//Get the dot product to find the angle
float Angle = acos(VectorTo.x*LocalVector.x +
VectorTo.y*LocalVector.y +
VectorTo.z*LocalVector.z);
//Determine whether or not the angle is positive
//Get the cross product of the axis and the local vector
sf::Vector3<float> ThirdVect(Axis.y*LocalVector.z - Axis.z*LocalVector.y,
Axis.z*LocalVector.x - Axis.x*LocalVector.z,
Axis.x*LocalVector.y - Axis.y*LocalVector.x);
//If the dot product of that and the local vector is negative, so is the angle
if (ThirdVect.x*VectorTo.x + ThirdVect.y*VectorTo.y + ThirdVect.z*VectorTo.z < 0)
{
Angle = -Angle;
}
//Finally, create a quaternion
Quaternion AxisAngle;
AxisAngle.FromAxisAngle(Angle, Axis.x, Axis.y, Axis.z);
//And multiply it into the current orientation
m_Orientation = AxisAngle * m_Orientation;
}
This almost works. What happens is that the camera seems to rotate half the distance towards the Target point. If I attempt the rotation again, it performs half the remaining rotation, ad infinitum, such that if I hold down the "Look-At-Button", the camera's orientation gets closer and closer to looking directly at the target, but is also constantly slowing down in its rotation, such that it never quite gets there.
Note that I don't want to resort to gluLookAt(), as I will also eventually need this code to point objects other than the camera at one another, and my objects already use quaternions for their orientations. For example, I might want to create an eyeball that tracks the position of something moving around in front of it, or a projectile that updates its orientation to seek out its target.
Normalize Axis vector before passing it to FromAxisAngle.
Why are you using a quaternion? You're just making things more complex and requiring more computation in this instance. To set up a matrix:-
calculate vector from observer to observed (which you're doing already)
normalise it (again, doing it already) = at
cross product this with the observer's up direction = right
normalise right
cross product at and right to get up
and you're done. The right, up and at vectors are the first, second and third row (or column, depending on how you set things up) of your matrix. The final row/column is the objects position.
But it looks like you want to transform an existing matrix to this new matrix over several frames. SLERPs do this to matricies as well as quaternions (which isn't surprising when you look into the maths). For the transformation, store the initial and target matricies and then SLERP between them, changing the amount to SLERP by each frame (e.g. 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0 - although a non-linear progression would look nicer).
Don't forget that you're converting a quaternion back into a matrix in order to pass it to the rendering pipeline (unless there's some new features in the shaders to handle quaternions natively). So any efficencies due to quaternion use has to take into account the conversion process as well.
I need to rotate the camera around a player from a third person view. (Nothing fancy).
Here it is how I try it:
// Forward, right, and position define the plane - they have x,y,z components.
void rotate ( float angle, Vector interestPoint )
{
Vector oldForward ( Forward );
forward = forward * cos(angle) + right * sin(angle);
forward.Normalize();
right = forward.CrossProduct ( up );
right.Normalize();
position = ( position + old_forward * position.Distance( interestPoint ) ) - (forward * position.Distance( interestPoint ) );
this->angle += angle;
}
The problem is that if, let's say just do turn left a lot, the distance between the object and the camera increases.
For a very simple orbit camera, like most 3rd person adventure games, you will need 4 things:
The position of the target
The distance from the target
The azimuthal angle
The polar angle
(If you want your camera to be always relative to the target in orientation, you need to provide the target's orientation as well, in this case I will simply use the world orientation)
See Spherical coordinate systems for a reference.
You should map your azimuthal angle on your horizontal control (and make it loop around when you reach 2 * PI) and your polar angle should be mapped on your vertical control (or inverted if the player selects that option and make it clamped between -PI and PI - watch out for calculations based on the world Up vector if you go parallel to it (-PI or PI)
The distance can be fixed or driven by a spline, for this case we will assume a fixed distance.
So, to compute your position you start with WorldForward, which is a unit vector pointing in the axis that you generally consider to be your forward, for example (1,0,0) (here, if we were building a relative camera, we would use our target's forward vector) and you invert it (* -1) to go "from the target" "to your camera".
(The following is untested pseudo code, but you should get the gist - also, keep note that it can be simplified, I just went for clarity)
Next step is to rotate this vector using our azimuth angle, which is the horizontal orientation component of your camera. Something like:
Vector toCamera = WorldForward * -1;
Matrix horizontalRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(azimuth); // assuming Z is up
Vector horizontalRotationPosition = horizontalRotation.Transform(toCamera);
At this point, you have a camera that can rotate horizontally around your target, now to add the other axis, you simply transform again using the polar angle rotation:
Matrix verticalRotation = Matrix.CreateRotationY(polar); // assuming Y is right
Vector finalRotatedVector = verticalRotation.Transform(horizontalRotationPosition);
Now, what we have is a unit vector that points to the position where the camera should be, if you multiply it by the distance you want to keep from your target and add the position of your target, you should get your final position. Keep in mind that this unit vector, if negated, represents the forward vector of your camera.
Vector cameraPosition = targetPosition + finalRotatedVector * distanceFromTarget;