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Rotation Matrix from Vector in DirectX

Started by lukesmith123 Mar 17, 2012 at 4:04 PM 8 replies 5.4k views

Original Post

Mar 17, 2012 at 4:04 PM

Hi,

I have a direction vector and I want to create a rotation matrix from it. This is what I am trying:


 //direction = 0, 0, 1
 //up = 0, 1, 0
 //right = 0, 0, 0
 
 D3DXVec3Normalize(&direction, &direction);
 //right
 D3DXVec3Cross(&right, &up, &direction);
 D3DXVec3Normalize(&right, &right);
 
 rot(0,0) = right.x;
 rot(1,0) = right.y;
 rot(2,0) = right.z;
 rot(3,0) = 0; 
 rot(0,1) = up.x;
 rot(1,1) = up.y;
 rot(2,1) = up.z;
 rot(3,1) = 0;
 rot(0,2) = direction.x;
 rot(1,2) = direction.y;
 rot(2,2) = direction.z;
 rot(3,2) = 0; 
 rot(0,3) = 0.0f;
 rot(1,3) = 0.0f;
 rot(2,3) = 0.0f;
 rot(3,3) = 1.0f;

I had thought that his would work however it gives me an error where the model that uses the matrix is stretched and appears as a giant line across the screen.

Am I doing something wrong?

alvaro

Mar 17, 2012 at 5:23 PM

Your matrix always maps (0,1,0) to (0,1,0), but that's probably not what you want. What rotation exactly does the vector represent?

lukesmith123

Mar 17, 2012 at 5:53 PM

I'm a little confused but the vector is the objects heading. So if the vector was 0,0,1 it would face on the positive z and if it were 0,0,-1 it would face -z.

alvaro

Mar 17, 2012 at 6:17 PM

A direction in three dimensions is not enough to describe a rotation. Think of a pencil pointing somewhere: You can still rotate it around the axis and it still points to the same place.

Perhaps you are trying to build a lookAt matrix. That looks a lot like your code.

lukesmith123

Mar 17, 2012 at 10:14 PM

Ah that would explain why I'm getting so confused. So what would be the next step after determining the objects heading vector to create the rotation matrix?

alvaro

Mar 17, 2012 at 10:28 PM

Imagine I asked you that x is if I know that x+y=7. Obviously, you'd tell me that you can't tell me what x is, because there are many solutions. Well, your situation is very similar: Your problem is not completely specified.

lukesmith123

Mar 18, 2012 at 12:31 AM

My problem is that I have the direction vector that the object should be facing and I want to create the world matrix with the object rotated in the direction defined by the vector.

I had thought that I could do this simply by finding the right vector from the direction vector and the up vector and filling the rows of the matrix with this information. But that appears to be incorrect so now I am wondering how this can be achieved?