How are quaternions used in graphics?

Quaternions are mainly used in computer graphics when a 3D character rotation is involved. Quaternions allows a character to rotate about multiple axis simultaneously, instead of sequentially as matrix rotation allows.

Do quaternions avoid gimbal lock?

The only way to avoid gimbal lock is to use quaternion instead of euler to represent rotations. In this specific situation, unless both rotate manip and direction manip use quaternion, the gimbal lock behavior can NOT be avoided.

Why do we use quaternions?

Unit quaternions, known as versors, provide a convenient mathematical notation for representing spatial orientations and rotations of elements in three dimensional space. Specifically, they encode information about an axis-angle rotation about an arbitrary axis.

How are quaternions used?

Today, quaternions have applications in astronautics, robotics, computer visualisation, animation and special effects in movies, navigation and many other areas.

Do rotation matrices suffer from gimbal lock?

Benefit: Quaternion rotations do not suffer from Gimbal Lock. Quaternions are used to represent rotations. They are compact, don’t suffer from gimbal lock and can easily be interpolated. Unity internally uses Quaternions to represent all rotations.

Do quaternions have gimbal lock?

The “gimbal-lock-free” benefits of quaternions and rotation matrices only apply if you stick with those two representations throughout all your calculations. Euler angles (of any kind, of which there are 12, by the way); and. axis-angle.

What are quaternions and how do they work?

Quaternions are mathematical operators that are used to rotate and stretch vectors. This article provides an overview to aid in understanding the need for quaternions in applications like space navigation. Accurately locating, shifting, and rotating objects in space can be done in a variety of ways.

Are there any videos on quaternions on YouTube?

In addition to this sequence of explorable videos, there are two videos on YouTube on the subject. Some of the material here is duplicated, but you may find a different take on it helpful: What are quaternions, and how do you visualize them? A story of four dimensions.

Why are quaternions so hard to visualize?

Watch a recording of this explorable video on YouTube. One thing that makes quaternions so challenging is that they live and act in four dimensions, which is extremely hard (impossible?) to visualize.

What are quaterions?

Before we can fully understand quaterions, we must first understand where they came from. The root of quaternions is based on the concept of the complex number system.