quick question

Basically, there is a homeomorphism between the field of quaternions (known as H), or more specifically the unit sphere in this space, and orientation in R3. The very useful property of this subspace of H is that the line between points on the surface of this sphere represent minimum angle variation changes in orientation. That is to say, it gives you a straighforward way to move between two orientations, without the inherent problems of using standard euler angle interpolation (gimbal lock etc.). They can be specifically useful, to produce smooth camera movement. Here is a link.

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1095.asp

Thanks for the link!
I should have mentioned though that I was also wondering about
parent/child movement using quaternions instead of matrices,
im using OpenGL by the way. With 4x4 matrices, you can simple call glLoadMatrixf() to apply transformations to objects, but what about with quaternions...

glRotatef(quaternion.x,1,0,0);
...

doing it that way though you may as well use vectors for everything.


[edited by - no one on September 7, 2003 4:03:37 PM]