At 11:39 AM -0600 4/18/06, Chris Halford wrote:
That works. I guess I don't really understand the intended use of the orientation.
I think you do: it represents the orientation of the object in space, and is used to set or change that orientation. What you don't understand is the meaning of the *parts* of the quaternion, and that's OK -- as soon as you realize that you don't understand them, and stop trying to use them, then all confusion about quaternions will disappear. :) Or, mostly all, anyway.
Seriously though, the parts (X, Y, Z, and W) have mathematical meaning which isn't terribly useful in themselves. They are useful for comparing two quaternions, or copying one to another, because those four numbers entirely represent everything there is to a quaternion. But they don't relate to geometry very directly, and the Quaternion class has functions already that provide easy ways to do anything you might need to do with them, so there is very little (or no) need to muck about with them directly.
Of course, as the other Joe pointed out, sometimes you don't need to touch orientation at all, and just use the convenience methods on Object3D itself (e.g. Pitch, Roll, and Yaw). That's OK too; it's just additional options for doing things the easy way.
Best, - Joe -- Joseph J. Strout [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
