So your answer is: Don't ask:) Oddly, in this instance I find that
totally reasonable.
I was hoping to use the orientation as I have an object that needs to
point in one of 6 directions and smoothly rotate from one to the
other. I didn't want to necessarily track what way it was facing, but
rather get it to rotate to an absolute orientation. It is only a
little more code to do it using yaw, pitch and roll, so I'm OK with
this.
On the same topic. What is the normal way to get a smooth rotation in
a 3d space? I can just loop through a rotation with updates after
each adjustment, or I can use a timer firing N times. Using a timer
seems to be a good way to control the speed, but then I have to
either disable further commands to rotate when it isn't done, or
dynamically recalculate where it is rotating to. In the second
option, I need a way to be able to calculate where the object is
pointing, and without knowing how to use the orientation properly, I
think it might be complicated.
Any suggestions?
C.
On Apr 18, 2006, at 11:52 AM, Joseph J. Strout wrote:
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]
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