Quaternion and Euler Angle conversion issue

[jonathanlurie]

Hey all,

I've been playing a bit with quaternions to rotate meshes but I also need to use Euler angles. The quaternions are great for my internal cooking because (imo) they are easier to use and more versatile than Euler angles, but Euler angles are good for UI, it speaks to people (especially if we convert everything into degrees (the audience of the app is neuroscience researchers, so they would probably think quaternions are black magic).

The BJS doc says "once you have used a quaternion, the rotation property of a mesh become null and basically no longer usable". Fortunately, we can have user think they set the rotation with a Euler angle but internally convert in into a quaternion. Unfortunately, I think I went into a bug. Here is what I have:

// this._planeSystem is a mesh composed of 3 orthogonal planes

let currentQuaternion = BABYLON.Quaternion.FromRotationMatrix( this._planeSystem.computeWorldMatrix(true) )
let eulerAngle = currentQuaternion.toEulerAngles()
let someQuaternion = eulerAngle.toQuaternion()

/*
I expected currentQuaternion to be the same as someQuaternion (with possibly some epsylon)
but instead, here is what I have:

*/

currentQuaternion
{
  w: 0.9987502633525326,
  x: 0.04997916777685541,
  y: 0,
  z: -1.1097604563493715e-17
}

eulerAngle
{
  x: 0.09999999729822372,
  y: -1.1148677691588498e-18,
  z: -2.2278771887960178e-17
}

someQuaternion
{
  w: 0.9987502604624825,
  x: -5.56737237414314e-19,
  y: -2.786008172251712e-20,
  z: 0.04997916792147843
}

/*
I am not sure if it's toEulerAngles() or toEulerAngles() which is in fault but it looks like someQuaternion.z should have been someQuaternion.x
*/

I'm not sure, but looking at the source, it looks like you plan on giving the choice of the order.

Do you confirm it's a bug?

Cheers,

Jonathan.

 

 

[jonathanlurie]

I now know that it's the method 'Vector3.toQuaternion()' that is guilty!

In my project, I just replaced it by a piece of code I borrowed from glMatrix that made more Babylony:

  function eulerAngleToQuaternion( eulerAngle={x:0, y:0, z:0}) {
    let toHalf = 0.5;
    let x = eulerAngle.x * toHalf;
    let y = eulerAngle.y * toHalf;
    let z = eulerAngle.z * toHalf;
    let sx = Math.sin(x);
    let cx = Math.cos(x);
    let sy = Math.sin(y);
    let cy = Math.cos(y);
    let sz = Math.sin(z);
    let cz = Math.cos(z);
    let quat = {
      x: sx * cy * cz - cx * sy * sz,
      y: cx * sy * cz + sx * cy * sz,
      z: cx * cy * sz - sx * sy * cz,
      w: cx * cy * cz + sx * sy * sz
    }
    return quat;
  }

It now gives the same quaternion back, which is good enough for now. It also seems simpler than the one implemented in babylon.math.ts

Cheers.

[Sebavan]

Thanks a lot for the investigation I ll check with @Deltakosh on Wednesday as we are really close from the release :-)

Playground comparing both results: https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#SVKGHN#2

[jonathanlurie]

Thanks @Sebavan for the playground! It looks like both are still moving... Also, you made me realize I forgot to normalize my quat!

[Sebavan]

np We ll look into it ASAP.

[Sebavan]

Quick update, I completely forgot...

The method from yaw pitch roll to quat is on the quaternion class and is fully stable:

https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#SVKGHN#3

[Sebavan]

I swap the vector toQuaternion to work intuitively on the release version. So now all works as expected. Thanks for reporting:

https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#SVKGHN#3 and https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#SVKGHN#2

[jonathanlurie]

Hey @Sebavan , thanks for the fix! You're right, using BABYLON.Quaternion.RotationYawPitchRoll(y, x, z) is a solid alternative!

I've just updated to v3.2.0-rc.2 and now I can get my user to think in Euler angles (read/write) but have all my internal logic in quaternions!! Thanks for your reactivity on the updates and on providing playground examples, highly appreciated!

Cheers.