Conceptually a quaternion can store the rotation around an axis by some degree.
Now, what is the numerically most robust and least calculation intensive way to rotate the axis?
For example when i have a quaternion, which rotates 90 degrees around the y-axis and i want those 90 degrees to be applied to some other arbitrary axis, described by a normalized vector.
EDIT: Since this also came up i added an answer on how to correctly change the axis a quaternion rotates around with another quaternion.
It is a bit unclear what your actual goal is by doing what you describe.
In order to actually keep the angle but change the axis you would use Quaternion.ToAngleAxis, alter the axis and then pass it back into Quaternion.AngleAxis
like e.g.
Quaternion someRotation;
someRotation.ToAngleAxis(out var angle, out var axis);
var newAxis = Vector3.up;
var newRotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, new axis);
Or you rotate an existing Quaternion by another one using * like
Quaternion newRotation = someRotation * Quaternion.Euler(90, 0, 0);
which would take the existing rotation and rotate it by 90° around the X axis.
#derHugo's solution, solves the problem i initially asked, but the seconds part of his answer isn't doing what he seemed to be describing. To rotate a quaternions axis of rotation with another quaternion you would need to apply the rotations differently.
E.g. you have a quaternion yQuaternion, which rotates 90° around the y-axis and want to rotate, it's rotation axis by 90° around the x-axis (which would result in a quaternion rotating 90° around the z-axis) you'd have to do the following.
// The quaternion, we want to "rotate"
var yQuaternion = Quaternion.Euler(0f, 90f, 0f);
// The quaternion we want to rotate by.
var xQuaternion = Quaternion.Euler(90f, 0f, 0f);
var result = xQuaternion * yRotation * Quaternion.Inverse(xQuaternion);
What happens here is that we first rotate backwards to our desired axis, then apply the rotation we want to use and then revert the rotation we initally applied.
NOTE: I'm quit sure, that saying "rotate a quaternion" isn't a valid term when talking about this quaternion operations.
Related
I have written a script in Unity which takes a SkinnedMeshRenderer and AnimationClip and rotates the vertices in each by a specified number of degrees. It looks mostly correct except that rotations seem to be incorrect. Here is an example bone rotation (in euler angles) in the skeleton along with the correct values that would be needed for the animation to look correct.
With no rotation: (0, 0, -10)
Rotated 90 degrees: (-10, 0, 0)
Rotate 180 degrees: (0, 0, 10)
I have been trying to find a way to rotate these bones to make this conversion make sense with the data I have here, but have come up short. I know I want to rotate these values around the Y axis, but don't actually want the Y value in the euler angle to change. I am aware I could just reorient the root bone around the Y axis and the problem would be solved, but I want to have no rotation in the Y axis. I am "fixing" some older animations that have unnecessary rotation values in them.
var localBoneRotation = new Quaternion(keysX[j].value, keysY[j].value, keysZ[j].value, keysW[j].value).eulerAngles;
var reorientedForward = Quaternion.AngleAxis(rotation, Vector3.up) * Vector3.forward;
localBoneRotation.x *= reorientedForward.x;
localBoneRotation.y *= reorientedForward.y;
localBoneRotation.z *= reorientedForward.z;
var finalRotation = Quaternion.Euler(localBoneRotation);
keysX[j].value = finalRotation.x;
keysY[j].value = finalRotation.y;
keysZ[j].value = finalRotation.z;
keysW[j].value = finalRotation.w;
I have also tried using a matrix and Vector3 but most of the time I end up with values in the Y. Perhaps I am going about this incorrectly. I just need to be able to specify an angle rotation and then have the input data match the final euler angles with each of these data points.
I have a main camera that rotates around an object (which I already move with AddForce). Using AddTorque, I would like the object to rotate its Y axis of rotation in the direction in which the camera's Y axis of rotation points so as to simulate the rotation of a person turning around. To do this I thought of using a force that gave me 0 when the Y axes of the two objects are the same, but I tried and the rigidbody covers only one part of the rotation of the camera while the other part is as if it not is detected.
var currentR = rb.rotation.y;
var targetR = Camera.main.transform.rotation.y;
rb.AddTorque(transform.up * 1000f * (targetR - currentR));
rotation my object
desired rotation
Vector3 camForward = Camera.main.transform.forward;
Vector3 rbForward = rb.transform.forward;
Vector3 torque = Vector3.Cross(camForward, rbForward);
rb.AddTorque(torque);
I have a transform which is being rotated around the X axis. But while transferring this rotation to another transform, i want it to do the exact same rotation. But then around the Z axis.
However, this rotation is not a "rotation" it is just a transform which rotation gets edited from the outside. So i have to rotate the original transform to match the 2nd transform, but take the rotation into account.
Axis in below images: RED = X, GREEN = Y, BLUE = Z
Rotation original:
Rotation it should have after:
What would be the correct way to go about this frame by frame?
Thanks in advance,
Smiley
I can give you an answer that solves the general problem of changing the rotation from one axis to another.
Each transform object has a transform.localRotation property that represents the orientation of the transform, relative to the parent's orientation. If the transform has no parent, than this orientation is relative to World Space.
Quaternion is the data type used to represent rotations, and it has a useful method called ToAngleAxis.
float angle;
Vector3 axis;
transform.localRotation.ToAngleAxis(out angle, out axis);
Will set the variables angle and axis to the angle and axis of localRotation. The out part means that you're passing in a variable meant to be set by the function, rather than to be used as input.
In this case, the angle variable is the part you want to actually use. If you use Quaternion.AngleAxis, providing this angle value and your desired axis, you'll get a new rotation that will match your desired parameters.
For example: To change any rotation of transform1 to a Z-axis rotation on transform2, you would use
float angle;
float axis;
transform1.localRotation.ToAngleAxis(out angle, out axis);
transform2.localRotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, Vector3.forward);
Hope this helps
I am using the following code to handle rotating my player model to the position of my mouse.
void Update() {
// Generate a plane that intersects the transform's position with an upwards normal.
Plane playerPlane = new Plane(Vector3.up, transform.position);
// Generate a ray from the cursor position
Ray ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition);
// Determine the point where the cursor ray intersects the plane.
// This will be the point that the object must look towards to be looking at the mouse.
// Raycasting to a Plane object only gives us a distance, so we'll have to take the distance,
// then find the point along that ray that meets that distance. This will be the point
// to look at.
float hitdist = 0f;
// If the ray is parallel to the plane, Raycast will return false.
if (playerPlane.Raycast(ray, out hitdist)) {
// Get the point along the ray that hits the calculated distance.
var targetPoint = ray.GetPoint(hitdist);
// Determine the target rotation. This is the rotation if the transform looks at the target point.
Quaternion targetRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(targetPoint - transform.position);
// Smoothly rotate towards the target point.
transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, targetRotation, speed * Time.deltaTime); // WITH SPEED
//transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, targetRotation, 1); // WITHOUT SPEED!!!
}
I would like to be able to determine if the rotation is clockwise or counter-clockwise for animation purposes. What would be the best way of handling this? I'm fairly unfamiliar with quaternions so I'm not really sure how to approach this.
Angles between quaternions are unsigned. You will always get the shortest distance, and there's no way of defining "counter-clockwise" or "clockwise" unless you actively specify an axis (a point of view).
What you CAN do, however, is to take the axis that you're interested in (I assume it's the normal to your base plane.. perhaps the vertical of your world?) and take the flat 2D components of your quaternions, map them there and compute a simple 2D angle between those.
Quaternion A; //first Quaternion - this is your desired rotation
Quaternion B; //second Quaternion - this is your current rotation
// define an axis, usually just up
Vector3 axis = new Vector3(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);
// mock rotate the axis with each quaternion
Vector3 vecA = A * axis;
Vector3 vecB = B * axis;
// now we need to compute the actual 2D rotation projections on the base plane
float angleA = Mathf.Atan2(vecA.x, vecA.z) * Mathf.Rad2Deg;
float angleB = Mathf.Atan2(vecB.x, vecB.z) * Mathf.Rad2Deg;
// get the signed difference in these angles
var angleDiff = Mathf.DeltaAngle( angleA, angleB );
This should be it. I never had to do it myself and the code above is not tested. Similar to: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/26783/how-to-get-the-signed-angle-between-two-quaternion.html
This should work even if A or B are not Quaternions, but one of them is an euler-angle rotation.
Two dimensional quaternions (complex numbers) have a signed angle. But, the more correct way to think about complex numbers is with an unsigned angle which is relative to either the XY oriented plane or the YX oriented plane. I.E. a combination of an unsigned angle an an oriented plane of rotation.
In 2D there are only two oriented planes of rotation so the idea of a "signed angle" is really just a trick to get both the unsigned angle and the oriented plane of rotation packed into a single number.
For a quaternion the "signed angle" trick cannot be used because in 3D you have an infinite number of oriented planes you can rotate in, so a single signed angle cannot encode all the rotation information like it can in the 2D case.
The only way for a signed angle to make sense in 3D is with reference to a particular oriented plane, such as the XY oriented plane.
-- UPDATE --
This is pretty easy to solve as a method on a quaternion class. If all you want to know is "is this counter clockwise", then since we know the rotation angle is from 0 to 180, a positive dot product between the quat's axis of rotation and the surface normal should indicate that we're rotating counter clockwise from the perspective of that surface. And a negative dot product indicates the opposite. Ignoring the zero case, this should do the trick with much less work:
public bool IsCounterClockwise( in Vector3 normal ) => I*normal.X + J*normal.Y + K*normal.Z >= 0;
How to rotate a 3d game object around its center point in unity 3d.
Just use bounds.center from the renderer
Vector3 position = myGameObject.GetComponent<Renderer>().bounds.center;
myGameObject.transform.RotateAround(position, rotationVector, degreesPerSecond * Time.deltaTime);
where rotationVector is your rotation axis (Vector3)
The two common ways to rotate an object are
The rotate attribute in the transform. Using this one you can set the exact coordinates for the target object rotation. However, you'll have to manage the smoothness by yourself if you want to make animations and the values are given through Quaternion type. I recommend to use the static method Quaternion.Euler so you can pass values in a X, Y, Z. The example below set the object to turn 90 degrees clockwise in the Y axis:
transform.rotation = Quaternion.Euler (0, 90, 0);
The second approach uses the Rotation method in the same transform attribute. This method allow you to pass the amount of degrees in which object will rotate and already accept X, Y and Z coordinates instead Quaternion.
The example below rotate the object 1 degree clockwise in the Y axis:
transform.Rotate (0, 1, 0);
To best understand the difference between both methods, if you use the first one in an Update method you'll see the object static rotated 90 degrees in the Y axis. The second example used in an Update will make the object spin clockwise in the Y axis (too fast).
use
Transform.rotation
look here for Examples/Documentation :
Unity Script Reference