GLKView GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt description and explanation - objective-c

For modelviewMatrix I understand how to form translate and scale Matrix. But I am unable to understand how to form viewMatrix using GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt. Can anyone explain how to it works and how to give value to parameters(eye center up X Y Z).
GLK_INLINE GLKMatrix4 GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt(float eyeX, float eyeY, float eyeZ,
float centerX, float centerY, float centerZ,
float upX, float upY, float upZ)

GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt creates a viewing matrix (in the same way as gluLookAt does, in case you look at other OpenGL code). As the parameters suggest, it considers the position of the viewer's eye, the point in space they're looking at (e.g., a point on an object), and the up vector, which specifies which direction is "up" (e.g., pointing towards the sky). The viewing matrix generated is the combination of a rotation matrix (composed of a set of orthonormal bases [basis vectors]) and an translation.
Logically, the matrix is basically constructed in a few steps:
compute the line-of-sight vector, which is the normalized vector going from the eye's position to the point you're looking at, the center point.
compute the cross product of the line-of-sight vector with the up vector, and normalize the resulting vector.
compute the cross product of the vector computed in step 2. with the line-of-sight to complete the orthonormal basis.
create a 3x3 rotation matrix by setting the first row to the vector created in step 2., the middle row with the vector from step 3., and the bottom row to the negated, normalized line-of-sight vector.
those three steps produce a rotation matrix that will rotate the world coordinate system into eye coordinates (a coordinate system where the eye is located at the origin, and the line-of-sight is down the -z axis. The final viewing matrix is computed by multiplying a translation to the negated eye position, which moves the "world coordinate positioned eye" to the origin for eye coordinates.
Here's a related question showing the code of GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt, and here's a question with more detail about eye coordinates and related coordinate systems: (What exactly are eye space coordinates?) .

Related

How to get the orientation vector of the camera given its rotation matrix / quaternion?

When I have the rotation matrix or quaternion representation of a camera's pose, is there a way to obtain the orientation vector of the camera?
Here the orientation vector means a 3D vector in the world coordinate (WC) that represents an orientation.
I read through the commonly used representations like euler angles and axis-angle, but I didn't find any representations that can represent the orientation of the camera in WC.
Could anyone help? Thank you!
You probably want the 3x1 Rodrigues vector. Just plug in the SO(3) rotation matrix of the camera orientation in world coordinates, and you will get a vector representation. Just to be clear, pose and orientation are different. Pose is orientation + position. If you want the position as well, that can be represented as a 3x1 vector of t = [x y z]' (using Matlab notation).
A typical representation of the pose is a 4x4 matrix in SE(3) (Special Euclidean Group), which is just:
T = [R t; 0 0 0 1]
Where R is the rotation matrix in SO(3).

How to convert relative GPS coordinates to a "local custom" x, y, z coordinate?

Let's say I know two persons are standing at GPS location A and B. A is looking at B.
I would like to know B's (x, y, z) coordinates based on A, where the +y axis is the direction to B (since A is looking at B), +z is the vertically to the sky. (therefore +x is right-hand side of A)
I know how to convert a GPS coordinate to UTM, but in this case, a coordinate system rotation and translation seem needed. I am going to come up with a calculation, but before that, will there be some codes to look at?
I think this must be handled by many applications, but I could not find so far.
Convert booth points to 3D Cartesian
GPS suggest WGS84 so see How to convert a spherical velocity coordinates into cartesian
Construct transform matrix with your desired axises
see Understanding 4x4 homogenous transform matrices. So you need 3 perpendicular unit vectors. The Y is view direction so
Y = normalize(B-A);
one of the axises will be most likely up vector so you can use approximation
Z = normalize(A);
and as origin you can use point A directly. Now just exploit cross product to create X perpendicular to both and make also Y perpendicular to X and Z (so up stays up). For more info see Representing Points on a Circular Radar Math approach
Transfrom B to B' by that matrix
Again in the QA linked in #1 is how to do it. It is simple matrix/vector multiplication.

pose estimation: determine whether rotation and transmation matrix are right

Recently I'm struggling with a pose estimation problem with a single camera. I have some 3D points and the corresponding 2D points on the image. Then I use solvePnP to get the rotation and translation vectors. The problem is, how can I determine whether the vectors are right results?
Now I use an indirect way to do this:
I use the rotation matrix, the translation vector and the world 3D coordinates of a certain point to obtain the coordinates of that point in Camera system. Then all I have to do is to determine whether the coordinates are reasonable. I think I know the directions of x, y and z axes of Camera system.
Is Camera center the origin of the Camera system?
Now consider the x component of that point. Is x equavalent to the distance of the camera and the point in the world space in Camera's x-axis direction (the sign can then be determined by the point is placed on which side of the camera)?
The figure below is in world space, while the axes depicted are in Camera system.
========How Camera and the point be placed in the world space=============
|
|
Camera--------------------------> Z axis
| |} Xw?
| P(Xw, Yw, Zw)
|
v x-axis
My rvec and tvec results seems right and wrong. For a specified point, the z value seems reasonable, I mean, if this point is about one meter away from the camera in the z direction, then the z value is about 1. But for x and y, according to the location of the point I think x and y should be positive but they are negative. What's more, the pattern detected in the original image is like this:
But using the points coordinates calculated in Camera system and the camera intrinsic parameters, I get an image like this:
The target keeps its pattern. But it moved from bottom right to top left. I cannot understand why.
Yes, the camera center is the origin of the camera coordinate system, which seems to be right following to this post.
In case of camera pose estimation, value seems reasonable can be named as backprojection error. That's a measure of how well your resulting rotation and translation map the 3D points to the 2D pixels. Unfortunately, solvePnP does not return a residual error measure. Therefore one has to compute it:
cv::solvePnP(worldPoints, pixelPoints, camIntrinsics, camDistortion, rVec, tVec);
// Use computed solution to project 3D pattern to image
cv::Mat projectedPattern;
cv::projectPoints(worldPoints, rVec, tVec, camIntrinsics, camDistortion, projectedPattern);
// Compute error of each 2D-3D correspondence.
std::vector<float> errors;
for( int i=0; i < corners.size(); ++i)
{
float dx = pixelPoints.at(i).x - projectedPattern.at<float>(i, 0);
float dy = pixelPoints.at(i).y - projectedPattern.at<float>(i, 1);
// Euclidean distance between projected and real measured pixel
float err = sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy);
errors.push_back(err);
}
// Here, compute max or average of your "errors"
An average backprojection error of a calibrated camera might be in the range of 0 - 2 pixel. According to your two pictures, this would be way more. To me, it looks like a scaling problem. If I am right, you compute the projection yourself. Maybe you can try once cv::projectPoints() and compare.
When it comes to transformations, I learned not to follow my imagination :) The first thing I Do with the returned rVec and tVec is usually creating a 4x4 rigid transformation matrix out of it (I posted once code here). This makes things even less intuitive, but instead it is compact and handy.
Now I know the answers.
Yes, the camera center is the origin of the camera coordinate system.
Consider that the coordinates in the camera system are calculated as (xc,yc,zc). Then xc should be the distance between the camera and
the point in real world in the x direction.
Next, how to determine whether the output matrices are right?
1. as #eidelen points out, backprojection error is one indicative measure.
2. Calculate the coordinates of the points according to their coordinates in the world coordinate system and the matrices.
So why did I get a wrong result(the pattern remained but moved to a different region of the image)?
Parameter cameraMatrix in solvePnP() is a matrix supplying the parameters of the camera's external parameters. In camera matrix, you should use width/2 and height/2 for cx and cy. While I use width and height of the image size. I think that caused the error. After I corrected that and re-calibrated the camera, everything seems fine.

kinect object measuring

I am currently trying to figure out a way to calcute the size of a given object with kinect
since I have the following data
angular field of view of the lens
distance
and width in pixels from a 800*600 resolution
I believe this can be possible to calculate. Does anyone has math skills to give me a little help?
With some trigonometry, it should be possible to approximate.
If you draw a right trangle ABC, with the camera at one of the legs (A), and the object at the far end (edge BC), where the right angle is (C), then the height of the object is going to be the height of leg BC. the distance to the pixel might be the distance of leg AC or AB. The Kinect sensor specifications are going to regulate that. If you get distance to the center of a pixel, then it will be AC. if you have distances to pixel corners then the distance will be AB.
With A representing the angle at the camera that the pixel takes up, d is the distance of the hypotenuse of a right angle and y is the distance of the far leg (edge BC):
sin(A) = y / d
y = d sin(A)
y is the length of the pixel projected into the object plane. You calculate it by multiplying the sin of the angel by the distance to the object.
Here I confess I do not know the API of the kinect, and what level of detail it provides. You say you have the angle of the field of vision. You might assume each pixel of your 800x600 pixel grid takes up an equal angle of your camera's field of vision. If you do, then you can break up that field of vision into equal pieces to measure the linear size of your object in each pixel.
You also mentioned that you have the distance to the object. I was assuming that you have a distance map for each pixel of the 800x600 grid. If this is incorrect, some calculations can be done to approximate a distance grid for the pixels involving the object of interest if you make some assumptions about the object being measured.

Solving for optimal alignment of 3d polygonal mesh

I'm trying to implement a geometry templating engine. One of the parts is taking a prototypical polygonal mesh and aligning an instantiation with some points in the larger object.
So, the problem is this: given 3d point positions for some (perhaps all) of the verts in a polygonal mesh, find a scaled rotation that minimizes the difference between the transformed verts and the given point positions. I also have a centerpoint that can remain fixed, if that helps. The correspondence between the verts and the 3d locations is fixed.
I'm thinking this could be done by solving for the coefficients of a transformation matrix, but I'm a little unsure how to build the system to solve.
An example of this is a cube. The prototype would be the unit cube, centered at the origin, with vert indices:
4----5
|\ \
| 6----7
| | |
0 | 1 |
\| |
2----3
An example of the vert locations to fit:
v0: 1.243,2.163,-3.426
v1: 4.190,-0.408,-0.485
v2: -1.974,-1.525,-3.426
v3: 0.974,-4.096,-0.485
v5: 1.974,1.525,3.426
v7: -1.243,-2.163,3.426
So, given that prototype and those points, how do I find the single scale factor, and the rotation about x, y, and z that will minimize the distance between the verts and those positions? It would be best for the method to be generalizable to an arbitrary mesh, not just a cube.
Assuming you have all points and their correspondences, you can fine-tune your match by solving the least squares problem:
minimize Norm(T*V-M)
where T is the transformation matrix you are looking for, V are the vertices to fit, and M are the vertices of the prototype. Norm refers to the Frobenius norm. M and V are 3xN matrices where each column is a 3-vector of a vertex of the prototype and corresponding vertex in the fitting vertex set. T is a 3x3 transformation matrix. Then the transformation matrix that minimizes the mean squared error is inverse(V*transpose(V))*V*transpose(M). The resulting matrix will in general not be orthogonal (you wanted one which has no shear), so you can solve a matrix Procrustes problem to find the nearest orthogonal matrix with the SVD.
Now, if you don't know which given points will correspond to which prototype points, the problem you want to solve is called surface registration. This is an active field of research. See for example this paper, which also covers rigid registration, which is what you're after.
If you want to create a mesh on an arbitrary 3D geometry, this is not the way it's typically done.
You should look at octree mesh generation techniques. You'll have better success if you work with a true 3D primitive, which means tetrahedra instead of cubes.
If your geometry is a 3D body, all you'll have is a surface description to start with. Determining "optimal" interior points isn't meaningful, because you don't have any. You'll want them to be arranged in such a way that the tetrahedra inside aren't too distorted, but that's the best you'll be able to do.