Moving Square to Sit onto Sphere's Face? - blender

What i an trying to do is move a square onto a face of a sphere. So that the pivot of the square is at the center of the face i selected. I also need the square to be rotated so that the faces of the square are parallel/perpendicular (depending on the face) to the face of sphere.

Using the exact size and position of the sphere, you can move the face exactly where it needs to be by using the G key in combination with numbers.
And if you need the sphere rotated, you can snap the 3D cursor to the centre of the sphere and rotate the plane relative to the cursor.

Related

Extracting a plane from an image taken by a camera

I have a camera at a known fixed location and orientation.
I also have a plane at a known location whose z position changes.
I want to turn the image from the camera into a top down view of the plane.
I can do this without knowing any positions by using the 4 points of the plane for a homography matrix and warping the image but each time the plane moves in Z I have to repeat this process.
After searching around online most methods seem to center on finding features of the image (using SIFT or something like it) then computing a homography matrix.
With the problem so constrained I thought there may be a simple linear algebra based approach.

Texture being stretched horizontally in Cinema 4D

I have a Poliigon Texture Demo c4d file. The file includes a sphere with a texture which renders correctly (bottom sphere in image). However when I create a sphere (top sphere in image), convert it to a polygonal object and apply the same texture it is being stretched horizontally.
I can fix this by changing the "Length U" setting to 50% in the Texture Tag but I notice that the sphere below does not need this modification so I was wondering how to convert the top sphere to a polygonal object the same way the bottom sphere is.
Cinema 4d Example
I have included a screengrab. The only notable difference is that the sphere below has additional diagonal division.
I am quite new to 3D so hope this all makes sense.
I think you only need to change the Sphere's Type, to a triangular type, like the sphere at the bottom.
If this helps, please consider up-voting and marking you question as solved

Camera Frustum Planes in Unity 3D

I understand that CalculateFrustumPlanes() in Unity3D returns an array of Plane objects, each representing a different frustum plane, but I can't find any documentation to suggest which element is which?
for example
[0] = Front
[1] = Back
etc.
I need to calculate whether a point in space (like the centre point of a Bounding volume) is in the camera frustum, for a Quad tree system.
What is exactly the order of the Planes in the returned array is not documented (and I don't know it).
Anyway I think you can figure it out without much effort: you just need to put the camera in a well know orientation and check the normal value's of each Plane.
I need to calculate whether a point in space (like the centre point of
a Bounding volume) is in the camera frustum, for a Quad tree system.
For a Quad Tree system, I think the intersection between the frustum and a GameObject's AABB is enough, so you don't even need to know exactly the order of the Plane's in the array to compute it. You can just use GeometryUtility.TestPlanesAABB.
Order: left, right, bottom, top, near, far.

Creating seamless worldmaps with Fractal Brownian Motion

I'm creating heightmaps using Fractal Brownian Motion. I'm then coloring it based on the heights and mapping it to a sphere. My problem is that the heightmap doesn't wrap seamlessly. I've used the Diamond Square algorithm and it's pretty easy to make things seamless using it, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it with fBm and I seem to be having trouble finding an explanation for it on the web.
To clarify, by "seamless", I mean that when I map it to a sphere, it creates a seamless map on the sphere.
Instead of calculating the heightmap per pixel on the heightmap, calculate the heightmap in 3D space based on each point on the sphere and then map that to an image pixel. You're going to have trouble wrapping a 2D, rectangular heightmap like that onto a sphere without getting ugly results at the poles unless you start your calculations from the sphere.
fBM generalizes to 3 dimensions, so given a point on the sphere you can get the height at that point, and then you can do the math to map that value to where it should be stored in the heightmap image.
Or you could use one of the traditional map projections. A cylindrical projection (x, y)->(x, sin y) would give you a seam of just one meridian, which you could rotate to the back. Or you could "antialias" the edge by one or another means.
With a stereographic projection (x,y,z)->(x/(z+1),y/(z+1)), there's only one sour point (the projection point itself).

regarding rotating the map in iOS

I am facing this problem while trying to rotate the map in my iPhone app
The view gets clipped and rotation also happens. I want to avoid the clipping. Any tips ?
heres the code:
viewToRotate.layer.transform = CATransform3DMakeRotation(0.8, 0., 0., 1.);
You need your map rotated in 3D ? If not (which is what I think you need), then just use CGAffineTransformMakeRotation (be careful, as it requires the angle in radians).
Also, if you don't want your map to be clipped, you need to make your map bigger, like in the image below (open in new tab to see it bigger)
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/4498/calculatemapboundswhenr.png
First, you need to calculate the diagonal of the rectangle (your visible map) as instructed in the image above (which I call "radius" because that would be the radius of the smallest circle bigger than your rectangle).
Second, using the radius, you need to calculate the (smallest) square that will allow your map to be seen without clipping. This square will be used to set the bounds of your map (caution: NOT the frame - Apple specifies that, when using rotation, you should not use frame - just bounds and / or center).
Make sure this square is centered on the center of your visible map rectangle (i.e. the square should have X pixels above AND below the small rectangle ... and Y pixels left AND right of the small rectangle).
Hope it helps !
Did you ever figure out the solution?
The only way I could do it was to make the MapView in Interface Builder much bigger than the actual size of the screen area its supposed to cover, then I centered the MapView such that its center was in the center of the narrower viewable area.
Rotation seemed to work similarly to how it works in the built-in Maps app.
My guess is that you have to do this so that the image tiles streaming in from Google cover a wide enough area to "fill in the blanks" so to speak, even if they're not always visable.
If you apply a little math, you could probably programmatically size and position the MapView such that you void clipping, but don't require more tiles than is absolutely necessary.