rotation of objects in OpenGL using 3D vector and angle - opengl

I have a problem with the orientation of objects in the OpenGL program, I can't calculate rotation of x, y, z based on 3D vector and angle or 4D vector.
Im working with c++.
I have:
Vector3f myVector;
float angle;
float rotx;
float roty;
float rotz;
//i need smomething like
doSomething(a,angle,&rotx,&roty,&rotz);
glRotatef(rotx,1.0,0,0);
glRotatef(roty,0,1.0,0);
glRotatef(rotz,0,0,1.0);
// draw object
"myVector" is a vector in 3d space. I want to rotate object in direction of vector. "angle" is rotation of object around the vector. "rotx,roty,rotz" are local variables. How to calculate rotx,roty,royz to do this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Euler_AxisAngle.png
In picture on link my object is oriented in direction of 'x', i want to orinet it in direction of 'e' and 'O' is my "angle".

How to calculate rotx,roty,royz to do this?
There's no unique solution to your problem. For each target direction there are 6 different ways to express it in Euler angles.
The only way to represent rotations unambigously are rotation matrices, or their close relatives, Quaternions.
The parameters to glRotate are very close to a quaternion. In fact the axis parameters are the normalized i,j,k elements of a quaternion and the real quaternion part is the rotation angle in radians.

Related

Compute a RPY (roll pitch yaw) from a 3d point on a sphere

I need a method to find a set of homogenous transformation matrices that describes the position and orientation in a sphere.
The idea is that I have an object in the center of this sphere which has a radius of dz. Since I know the 3d coordinate of the object I know all the 3d coordinates of the sphere. Is it possible to determine the RPY of any point on the sphere such that the point always points toward the object in the center?
illustration:
At the origo of this sphere we have an object. The radius of the sphere is dz.
The red dot is a point on the sphere, and the vector from this point toward the object/origo.
The position should be relatively easy to extract, as a sphere can be described by a function, but how do I determine the vector, or rotation matrix that points such that it points toward origo.
You could, using the center of the sphere as the origin, compute the unit vector of the line formed by the origin to the point on the edge of the sphere, and then multiply that unit vector by -1 to obtain the vector pointing toward the center of the sphere from the point on the edge of the sphere.
Example:
vec pointToCenter(Point edge, Point origin) {
vec norm = edge - origin;
vec unitVec = norm / vecLength(norm);
return unitVec * -1;
}
Once you have the vector you can convert it to euler angles for the RPY, an example is here
Of the top of my head I would suggest using quaterneons to define the rotation of any point at the origin, relative to the point you want on the surface of the sphere:
Pick the desired point on the sphere's surface, say the north pole for example
Translate that point to the origin (assuming the radius of the sphere is known), using 3D Pythagorus: x_comp^2 + y_comp^2 + z_comp^2 = hypotenuse^2
Create a rotation that points an axis at the original surface point. This will just be a scaled multiple of the x, y and z components making up the hypotenuse. I would just make it into unit components. Capture the resulting axis and rotation in a quaterneon (q, x, y, z), where x, y, z are the components of your axis and q is the rotation about that axis. Hard code q to one. You want to use quaterneons because it will make your resulting rotation matricies easier to work with
Translate the point back to the sphere's surface and negate the values of the components of your axis, to get (q, -x, -y, -z).
This will give you your point on the surface of the sphere, with an axis pointing back to the origin. With the north pole as an example, you would have a quaternion of (1, 0, -1, 0) at point (0, radius_length, 0) on the sphere's surface. See quatrotation.c in my below github repository for the resulting rotation matrix.
I don't have time to write code for this but I wrote a little tutorial with compilable code examples in a github repository a while back, which should get you started:
https://github.com/brownwa/opengl
Do the mat_rotation tutorial first, then do the quatereons one. It's doable in a weekend, a day if you're focused.

How to correctly represent 3D rotation in games

In most 3D platform games, only rotation around the Y axis is needed since the player is always positioned upright.
However, for a 3D space game where the player needs to be rotated on all axises, what is the best way to represent the rotation?
I first tried using Euler angles:
glRotatef(anglex, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
glRotatef(angley, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);
glRotatef(anglez, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
The problem I had with this approach is that after each rotation, the axises change. For example, when anglex and angley are 0, anglez rotates the ship around its wings, however if anglex or angley are non zero, this is no longer true. I want anglez to always rotate around the wings, irrelevant of anglex and angley.
I read that quaternions can be used to exhibit this desired behavior however was unable to achieve it in practice.
I assume my issue is due to the fact that I am basically still using Euler angles, but am converting the rotation to its quaternion representation before usage.
struct quaternion q = eulerToQuaternion(anglex, angley, anglez);
struct matrix m = quaternionToMatrix(q);
glMultMatrix(&m);
However, if storing each X, Y, and Z angle directly is incorrect, how do I say "Rotate the ship around the wings (or any consistent axis) by 1 degree" when my rotation is stored as a quaternion?
Additionally, I want to be able to translate the model at the angle that it is rotated by. Say I have just a quaternion with q.x, q.y, q.z, and q.w, how can I move it?
Quaternions are very good way to represent rotations, because they are efficient, but I prefer to represent the full state "position and orientation" by 4x4 matrices.
So, imagine you have a 4x4 matrix for every object in the scene. Initially, when the object is unrotated and untraslated, this matrix is the identity matrix, this is what I will call "original state". Suppose, for instance, the nose of your ship points towards -z in its original state, so a rotation matrix that spin the ship along the z axis is:
Matrix4 around_z(radian angle) {
c = cos(angle);
s = sin(angle);
return Matrix4(c, -s, 0, 0,
s, c, 0, 0,
0, 0, 1, 0,
0, 0, 0, 1);
}
now, if your ship is anywhere in space and rotated to any direction, and lets call this state t, if you want to spin the ship around z axis for an angle amount as if it was on its "original state", it would be:
t = t * around_z(angle);
And when drawing with OpenGL, t is what you multiply for every vertex of that ship. This assumes you are using column vectors (as OpenGL does), and be aware that matrices in OpenGL are stored columns first.
Basically, your problem seems to be with the order you are applying your rotations. See, quaternions and matrices multiplication are non-commutative. So, if instead, you write:
t = around_z(angle) * t;
You will have the around_z rotation applied not to the "original state" z, but to global coordinate z, with the ship already affected by the initial transformation (roatated and translated). This is the same thing when you call the glRotate and glTranslate functions. The order they are called matters.
Being a little more specific for your problem: you have the absolute translation trans, and the rotation around its center rot. You would update each object in your scene with something like:
void update(quaternion delta_rot, vector delta_trans) {
rot = rot * delta_rot;
trans = trans + rot.apply(delta_trans);
}
Where delta_rot and delta_trans are both expressed in coordinates relative to the original state, so, if you want to propel your ship forward 0.5 units, your delta_trans would be (0, 0, -0.5). To draw, it would be something like:
void draw() {
// Apply the absolute translation first
glLoadIdentity();
glTranslatevf(&trans);
// Apply the absolute rotation last
struct matrix m = quaternionToMatrix(q);
glMultMatrix(&m);
// This sequence is equivalent to:
// final_vertex_position = translation_matrix * rotation_matrix * vertex;
// ... draw stuff
}
The order of the calls I choose by reading the manual for glTranslate and glMultMatrix, to guarantee the order the transformations are applied.
About rot.apply()
As explained at Wikipedia article Quaternions and spatial rotation, to apply a rotation described by quaternion q on a vector p, it would be rp = q * p * q^(-1), where rp is the newly rotated vector. If you have a working quaternion library implemented on your game, you should either already have this operation implemented, or should implement it now, because this is the core of using quaternions as rotations.
For instance, if you have a quaternion that describes a rotation of 90° around (0,0,1), if you apply it to (1,0,0), you will have the vector (0,1,0), i.e. you have the original vector rotated by the quaternion. This is equivalent to converting your quaternion to matrix, and doing a matrix to colum-vector multiplication (by matrix multiplication rules, it yields another column-vector, the rotated vector).

How to properly rotate a quaternion along all axis?

I want to code a first person camera with its rotation stored in a quaternion. Unfortunately there is something wrong with the rotation.
The following function is responsible to rotate the camera. The parameters Mouse and Speed pass the mouse movement and rotation speed. Then the function fetches the rotation quaternion, rotates it and stores the result. By the way, I'm using Bullet Physics that is where the types and functions come from.
void Rotate(vec2 Mouse, float Speed)
{
btTransform transform = camera->getWorldTransform();
btQuaternion rotation = transform.getRotation();
Mouse = Mouse * Speed; // apply mouse sensitivity
btQuaternion change(Mouse.y, Mouse.x, 0); // create quaternion from angles
rotation = change * rotation; // rotate camera by that
transform.setRotation(rotation);
camera->setWorldTransform(transform);
}
To illustrate the resulting camera rotation when the mouse moves, I show you a hand drawing. On the left side the wrong rotation the camera actually performs is shown. On the right side the desired correct case is shown. The arrows indicate how the camera is rotate when moving the mouse up (in orange) and down (in blue).
As you can see, as long as the yaw is zero, the rotation is correct. But the more yaw it has, the smaller the circles in which the camera rotates become. In contrast, the circles should always run along the whole sphere like a longitude.
I am not very familiar with quaternions, so here I ask how to correctly rotate them.
I found out how to properly rotate a quaternion on my own. The key was to find vectors for the axis I want to rotate around. Those are used to create quaternions from axis and angle, when angle is the amount to rotate around the actual axis.
The following code shows what I ended up with. It also allows to roll the camera, which might be useful some time.
void Rotate(btVector3 Amount, float Sensitivity)
{
// fetch current rotation
btTransform transform = camera->getWorldTransform();
btQuaternion rotation = transform.getRotation();
// apply mouse sensitivity
Amount *= Sensitivity;
// create orientation vectors
btVector3 up(0, 1, 0);
btVector3 lookat = quatRotate(rotation, btVector3(0, 0, 1));
btVector3 forward = btVector3(lookat.getX(), 0, lookat.getZ()).normalize();
btVector3 side = btCross(up, forward);
// rotate camera with quaternions created from axis and angle
rotation = btQuaternion(up, Amount.getY()) * rotation;
rotation = btQuaternion(side, Amount.getX()) * rotation;
rotation = btQuaternion(forward, Amount.getZ()) * rotation;
// set new rotation
transform.setRotation(rotation);
camera->setWorldTransform(transform);
}
Since I rarely found information about quaternion rotation, I'll spend some time further explaining the code above.
Fetching and setting the rotation is specific to the physics engine and isn't related to this question so I won't elaborate on this. The next part, multiplying the amount by a mouse sensitivity should be really clear. Let's continue with the direction vectors.
The up vector depends on your own implementation. Most conveniently, the positive Y axis points up, therefore we end up with 0, 1, 0.
The lookat vector represents the direction the camera looks at. We simply rotate a unit vector pointing forward by the camera rotation quaternion. Again, the forward pointing vector depends on your conventions. If the Y axis is up, the positive Z axis might point forward, which is 0, 0, 1.
Do not mix that up with the next vector. It's named forward which references to the camera rotation. Therefore we just need to project the lookat vector to the ground. In this case, we simply take the lookat vector and ignore the up pointing component. For neatness we normalize that vector.
The side vector points leftwards from the camera orientation. Therefore it lies perpendicular to both the up and the forward vector and we can use the cross product to compute it.
Given those vectors, we can correctly rotate the camera quaternion around them. Which you start with, Z, Y or Z, depends on the Euler angle sequence which is, again, a convention varying from application to application. Since I want to rotations to be applied in Y X Z order, I do the following.
First, rotate the camera around the up axis by the amount for the Y rotation. This is yaw.
Then rotate around the side axis, which points leftwards, by the X amount. It's pitch.
And lastly, rotate around the forward vector by the Z amount to apply roll.
To apply those rotations, we need to multiply the quaternions create by axis and angle with the current camera rotation. Lastly we apply the resulted quaternion to the body in the physics simulation.
Matrices and pitch/yaw/roll both having their limitations, I do not use them anymore but use instead quaternions. I rotate the view vector and recalculate first the camera vectors, then the view matrix in regard to the rotated view vector.
void Camera::rotateViewVector(glm::quat quat) {
glm::quat rotatedViewQuat;
quat = glm::normalize(quat);
m_viewVector = glm::normalize(m_viewVector);
glm::quat viewQuat(0.0f,
m_viewVector.x,
m_viewVector.y,
m_viewVector.z);
viewQuat = glm::normalize(viewQuat);
rotatedViewQuat = (quat * viewQuat) * glm::conjugate(quat);
rotatedViewQuat = glm::normalize(rotatedViewQuat);
m_viewVector = glm::normalize(glm::vec3(rotatedViewQuat.x, rotatedViewQuat.y, rotatedViewQuat.z));
m_rightVector = glm::normalize(glm::cross(glm::vec3(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f), m_viewVector));
m_upVector = glm::normalize(glm::cross(m_viewVector, m_rightVector));
}

Transform cube on to surface of sphere in openGL

I'm currently working on a game which renders a textured sphere (representing Earth) and cubes representing player models (which will be implemented later).
When a user clicks a point on the sphere, the cube is translated from the origin (0,0,0) (which is also the center of the sphere) to the point on the surface of the sphere.
The problem is that I want the cube to rotate so as to sit with it's base flat on the sphere's surface (as opposed to just translating the cube).
What the best way is to calculate the rotation matrices about each axis in order to achieve this effect?
This is the same calculation as you'd perform to make a "lookat" matrix.
In this form, you would use the normalised point on the sphere as one axis (often used as the 'Z' axis), and then make the other two as perpendicular vectors to that. Typically to do that you choose some arbitrary 'up' axis, which needs to not be parallel to your first axis, and then use two cross-products. First you cross 'Z' and 'Up' to make an 'X' axis, and then you cross the 'X' and 'Z' axes to make a 'Y' axis.
The X, Y, and Z axes (normalised) form a rotation matrix which will orient the cube to the surface normal of the sphere. Then just translate it to the surface point.
The basic idea in GL is this:
float x_axis[3];
float y_axis[3];
float z_axis[3]; // This is the point on sphere, normalised
x_axis = cross(z_axis, up);
normalise(x_axis);
y_axis = cross(z_axis, x_axis);
DrawSphere();
float mat[16] = {
x_axis[0],x_axis[1],x_axis[2],0,
y_axis[0],y_axis[1],y_axis[2],0,
z_axis[0],z_axis[1],z_axis[2],0,
(sphereRad + cubeSize) * z_axis[0], (sphereRad + cubeSize) * z_axis[1], (sphereRad + cubeSize) * z_axis[2], 1 };
glMultMatrixf(mat);
DrawCube();
Where z_axis[] is the normalised point on the sphere, x_axis[] is the normalised cross-product of that vector with the arbitrary 'up' vector, and y_axis[] is the normalised cross-product of the other two axes. sphereRad and cubeSize are the sizes of the sphere and cube - I'm assuming both shapes are centred on their local coordinate origin.

Euler angles and extrude direction

I'm creating a C++ ifc importer.
I have a direction vector and I want to extrude a section from it. The section itself is a list of 2d points.
To calculate the extrusion direction I have to multiply a non-transformed direction with a transformation matrix.
The matrix has a transformation in x, y, and z (like Euler angles).
I must calculate the rotation angle around the extrude direction.
I have a matrix class that returns the Euler angles from a
matrix:
matrix.ExtractEulerXYZ(x,y,z)
The problem is that I can have a direction vector that has a rotation in x, y or z, how can I select the correct angle x, y, or z from the extrude direction?
A 2d point is at location (x, y) in 2d space and (x, y, 0) in 3d space.
Euler angles in 3d space define 3 rotations from the xyz axes to rotate the xyz axes to the specified point. That is, if you mark a point on the x axis that is the correct distance on the x axis to the point, you rotate the axes by a along the XY plane, b along the ZY plane and c along the ZX plane.
See the animation in the "Relationship with physical motions" section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_angles -- particularly, follow the progress of the x axis that initially projects toward the bottom left corner.
If you just have a 2d point, the ZY and ZX rotations do not do anything -- you are just rotating around the XY axis. Therefore, you can use simple trigonometry (SOH CAH TOA) to find the angle of the line from the origin to the point; there is no need to use a matrix.