How to calculate the quaternion that represents a triangle's 3D rotation? - quaternions

Or to look at it another way, let's say we have 2 same size triangles located and orientated at different parts of 3D space. How do you calculate the quaternion that describes the rotation such that applying the quaternion to triangle A would have it sit at triangle B? It is difficult to see how finding the normal of A and B and calculating the quaternion from this would work because the normal vector does not contain information about rotation (or rather, it assumes the standard base frame for the normals of both triangles thus throwing away valuable information). It seems you would need to find the vectors from each triangles (a, b, c) to the others (a, b, c) and somehow construct a quaternion out of this. Way beyond me, and could any mathematicians please dumb it down.

First orient the normal vectors then the plane.
Source=(s1,s2,s3)
Target=(t1,t2,t3)
NormSource = (s1 - s2)cross(s1 - s3)
NormTarget = (t1 - t2)cross(t1 - t3)
Quat1 = getRotationTo (NormSource,NormTarget)
Quat2 = getRotationTo ( Quat1 * (s1 - s2),(t1 - t2) );
QuatFinal = Quat2 * Quat1

Related

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.

How to get a 3D point on a plane (which is represented as normal and offset from origin)?

I know how to get the intersection point between a ray and a plane, if I know the ray and
a point on the plane, and the plane normal.
In the code I use the plane is represented as signed offset from origin, and normal, and I
need to get some, any point on the plane. How to do this?
So, the plane equation: Ax + By + Cz + D = 0, and I know A,B and C, that is basically
the normal of the plane and I know D, which is the signed distance from the origin. And
my question is, given that how do I get some 3D point on the plane?
Thanks
If (A, B, C) are normalized vector, the point on the plane closest to original is simply:
(-AD, -BD, -CD)
This can be easily known from your description that (A, B, C) is the plane normal, and D is the distance between the plane and origin.
This method is simple and do not need any branching.
Point on plane closest to origin
You get one plane point by intersecting plane with a ray (line) :-)
Choose some point P=(x,y,z), calculate w=Ax+By+Cz.
If w=-D than P is on the plane.
For w!=-D, choose some direction Q=(dx,dy,dz) for which l=Adx+Bdy+Cdz!=0, e.g. q=(A,0,0), if B!=0 or C!=0. Than point P+l*Q/w is on the plane.

How can I find the points in a line - Objective c?

Consider a line from point A (x,y) to B (p,q).
The method CGContextMoveToPoint(context, x, y); moves to the point x,y and the method CGContextAddLineToPoint(context, p, q); will draw the line from point A to B.
My question is, can I find the all points that the line cover?
Actually I need to know the exact point which is x points before the end point B.
Refer this image..
The line above is just for reference. This line may have in any angle. I needed the 5th point which is in the line before the point B.
Thank you
You should not think in terms of pixels. Coordinates are floating point values. The geometric point at (x,y) does not need to be a pixel at all. In fact you should think of pixels as being rectangles in your coordinate system.
This means that "x pixels before the end point" does not really makes sense. If a pixel is a rectangle, "x pixels" is a different quantity if you move horizontally than it is if you move vertically. And if you move in any other direction it's even harder to decide what it means.
Depending on what you are trying to do it may or may not be easy to translate your concepts in pixel terms. It's probably better, however, to do the opposite and stop thinking in terms of pixels and translate all you are currently expressing in pixel terms into non pixel terms.
Also remember that exactly what a pixel is is system dependent and you may or may not, in general, be able to query the system about it (especially if you take into consideration things like retina displays and all resolution independent functionality).
Edit:
I see you edited your question, but "points" is not more precise than "pixels".
However I'll try to give you a workable solution. At least it will be workable once you reformulate your problem in the right terms.
Your question, correctly formulated, should be:
Given two points A and B in a cartesian space and a distance delta, what are the coordinates of a point C such that C is on the line passing through A and B and the length of the segment BC is delta?
Here's a solution to that question:
// Assuming point A has coordinates (x,y) and point B has coordinates (p,q).
// Also assuming the distance from B to C is delta. We want to find the
// coordinates of C.
// I'll rename the coordinates for legibility.
double ax = x;
double ay = y;
double bx = p;
double by = q;
// this is what we want to find
double cx, cy;
// we need to establish a limit to acceptable computational precision
double epsilon = 0.000001;
if ( bx - ax < epsilon && by - ay < epsilon ) {
// the two points are too close to compute a reliable result
// this is an error condition. handle the error here (throw
// an exception or whatever).
} else {
// compute the vector from B to A and its length
double bax = bx - ax;
double bay = by - ay;
double balen = sqrt( pow(bax, 2) + pow(bay, 2) );
// compute the vector from B to C (same direction of the vector from
// B to A but with lenght delta)
double bcx = bax * delta / balen;
double bcy = bay * delta / balen;
// and now add that vector to the vector OB (with O being the origin)
// to find the solution
cx = bx + bcx;
cy = by + bcy;
}
You need to make sure that points A and B are not too close or the computations will be imprecise and the result will be different than you expect. That's what epsilon is supposed to do (you may or may not want to change the value of epsilon).
Ideally a suitable value for epsilon is not related to the smallest number representable in a double but to the level of precision that a double gives you for values in the order of magnitude of the coordinates.
I have hardcoded epsilon, which is a common way to define it's value as you generally know in advance the order of magnitude of your data, but there are also 'adaptive' techniques to compute an epsilon from the actual values of the arguments (the coordinates of A and B and the delta, in this case).
Also note that I have coded for legibility (the compiler should be able to optimize anyway). Feel free to recode if you wish.
It's not so hard, translate your segment into a math line expression, x pixels may be translated into radius of a circe with center in B, make a system to find where they intercept, you get two solutions, take the point that is closer to A.
This is the code you can use
float distanceFromPx2toP3 = 1300.0;
float mag = sqrt(pow((px2.x - px1.x),2) + pow((px2.y - px1.y),2));
float P3x = px2.x + distanceFromPx2toP3 * (px2.x - px1.x) / mag;
float P3y = px2.y + distanceFromPx2toP3 * (px2.y - px1.y) / mag;
CGPoint P3 = CGPointMake(P3x, P3y);
Either you can follow this link also it will give you the detail description -
How to find a third point using two other points and their angle.
You can find out number of points whichever you want to find.

Most efficient way to check if a point is in or on a convex quad polygon

I'm trying to figure out the most efficient/fast way to add a large number of convex quads (four given x,y points) into an array/list and then to check against those quads if a point is within or on the border of those quads.
I originally tried using ray casting but thought that it was a little overkill since I know that all my polygons will be quads and that they are also all convex.
currently, I am splitting each quad into two triangles that share an edge and then checking if the point is on or in each of those two triangles using their areas.
for example
Triangle ABC and test point P.
if (areaPAB + areaPAC + areaPBC == areaABC) { return true; }
This seems like it may run a little slow since I need to calculate the area of 4 different triangles to run the check and if the first triangle of the quad returns false, I have to get 4 more areas. (I include a bit of an epsilon in the check to make up for floating point errors)
I'm hoping that there is an even faster way that might involve a single check of a point against a quad rather than splitting it into two triangles.
I've attempted to reduce the number of checks by putting the polygon's into an array[,]. When adding a polygon, it checks the minimum and maximum x and y values and then using those, places the same poly into the proper array positions. When checking a point against the available polygons, it retrieves the proper list from the array of lists.
I've been searching through similar questions and I think what I'm using now may be the fastest way to figure out if a point is in a triangle, but I'm hoping that there's a better method to test against a quad that is always convex. Every polygon test I've looked up seems to be testing against a polygon that has many sides or is an irregular shape.
Thanks for taking the time to read my long winded question to what's prolly a simple problem.
I believe that fastest methods are:
1: Find mutual orientation of all vector pairs (DirectedEdge-CheckedPoint) through cross product signs. If all four signs are the same, then point is inside
Addition: for every edge
EV[i] = V[i+1] - V[i], where V[] - vertices in order
PV[i] = P - V[i]
Cross[i] = CrossProduct(EV[i], PV[i]) = EV[i].X * PV[i].Y - EV[i].Y * PV[i].X
Cross[i] value is positive, if point P lies in left semi-plane relatively to i-th edge (V[i] - V[i+1]), and negative otherwise. If all the Cross[] values are positive, then point p is inside the quad, vertices are in counter-clockwise order. f all the Cross[] values are negative, then point p is inside the quad, vertices are in clockwise order. If values have different signs, then point is outside the quad.
If quad set is the same for many point queries, then dmuir suggests to precalculate uniform line equation for every edge. Uniform line equation is a * x + b * y + c = 0. (a, b) is normal vector to edge. This equation has important property: sign of expression
(a * P.x + b * Y + c) determines semi-plane, where point P lies (as for crossproducts)
2: Split quad to 2 triangles and use vector method for each: express CheckedPoint vector in terms of basis vectors.
P = a*V1+b*V2
point is inside when a,b>=0 and their sum <=1
Both methods require about 10-15 additions, 6-10 multiplications and 2-7 comparisons (I don't consider floating point error compensation)
If you could afford to store, with each quad, the equation of each of its edges then you could save a little time over MBo's answer.
For example if you have an inward pointing normal vector N for each edge of the quad, and a constant d (which is N.p for one of the vertcies p on the edge) then a point x is in the quad if and only if N.x >= d for each edge. So thats 2 multiplications, one addition and one comparison per edge, and you'll need to perform up to 4 tests per point.This technique works for any convex polygon.

Placement of "good" control points in Bezier curves

I've been working on this problem for awhile now, and haven't been able to come up with a good solution thusfar.
The problem: I have an ordered list of three (or more) 2D points, and I want to stroke through these with a cubic Bezier curve, in such a way that it "looks good." The "looks good" part is pretty simple: I just want the wedge at the second point smoothed out (so, for example, the curve doesn't double-back on itself). So given three points, where should one place the two control points that would surround the second point in the triplet when drawing the curve.
My solution so far is as follows, but is incomplete. The idea might also help communicate the look that I'm after.
Given three points, (x1,y1), (x2,y2), (x3,y3). Take the circle inscribed by each triplet of points (if they are collinear, we just draw a straight line between them and move on). Take the line tangent to this circle at point (x2,y2) -- we will place the control points that surround (x2,y2) on this tangent line.
It's the last part that I'm stuck on. The problem I'm having is finding a way to place the two control points on this tangent line -- I have a good enough heuristic on how far from (x2,y2) on this line they should be, but of course, there are two points on this line that are that distance away. If we compute the one in the "wrong" direction, the curve loops around on itself.
To find the center of the circle described by the three points (if any of the points have the same x value, simply reorder the points in the calculation below):
double ma = (point2.y - point1.y) / (point2.x - point1.x);
double mb = (point3.y - point2.y) / (point3.x - point2.x);
CGPoint c; // Center of a circle passing through all three points.
c.x = (((ma * mb * (point1.y - point3.y)) + (mb * (point1.x + point2.x)) - (ma * (point2.x + point3.x))) / (2 * (mb - ma)));
c.y = (((-1 / ma) * (c.x - ((point1.x + point2.x) / 2))) + ((point1.y + point2.y) / 2));
Then, to find the points on the tangent line, in this case, finding the control point for the curve going from point2 to point3:
double d = ...; // distance we want the point. Based on the distance between
// point2 and point3.
// mc: Slope of the line perpendicular to the line between
// point2 and c.
double mc = - (c.x - point2.x) / (c.y - point2.y);
CGPoint tp; // point on the tangent line
double c = point2.y - mc * point2.x; // c == y intercept
tp.x = ???; // can't figure this out, the question is whether it should be
// less than point2.x, or greater than?
tp.y = mc * tp.x + c;
// then, compute a point cp that is distance d from point2 going in the direction
// of tp.
It sounds like you might need to figure out the direction the curve is going, in order to set the tangent points so that it won't double back on itself. From what I understand, it would be simply finding out the direction from (x1, y1) to (x2, y2), and then travelling on the tangent line your heuristic distance in the direction closest to the (x1, y1) -> (x2, y2) direction, and plopping the tangent point there.
If you're really confident that you have a good way of choosing how far along the tangent line your points should be, and you only need to decide which side to put each one on, then I would suggest that you look once again at that circle to which the line is tangent. You've got z1,z2,z3 in that order on the circle; imagine going around the circle from z2 towards z1, but go along the tangent line instead; that's which side the control point "before z2" should be; the control point "after z2" should be on the other side.
Note that this guarantees always to put the two control points on opposite sides of z2, which is important. (Also: you probably want them to be the same distance from z2, because otherwise you'll get a discontinuity at z2 in, er, the second derivative of your curve, which is likely to look a bit suboptimal.) I bet there will still be pathological cases.
If you don't mind a fair bit of code complexity, there's a sophisticated and very effective algorithm for exactly your problem (and more) in Don Knuth's METAFONT program (whose main purpose is drawing fonts). The algorithm is due to John Hobby. You can find a detailed explanation, and working code, in METAFONT or, perhaps better, the closely related METAPOST (which generates PostScript output instead of huge bitmaps).
Pointing you at it is a bit tricky, though, because METAFONT and METAPOST are "literate programs", which means that their source code and documentation consist of a kind of hybrid of Pascal code (for METAFONT) or C code (for METAPOST) and TeX markup. There are programs that will turn this into a beautifully typeset document, but so far as I know no one has put the result on the web anywhere. So here's a link to the source code, which you may or may not find entirely incomprehensible: http://foundry.supelec.fr/gf/project/metapost/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fsource%2Ftexk%2Fweb2c%2Fmplibdir%2Fmp.w&view=markup -- in which you should search for "Choosing control points".
(The beautifully-typeset document for METAFONT is available as a properly bound book under the title "METAFONT: the program". But it costs actual money, and the code is in Pascal.)