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Converting normal rotation to transform rotation

by A F · in Torque 3D Professional · 10/23/2012 (1:17 am) · 3 replies

I am trying to create a new object and rotate that to line up with the angle of the surface of the object that the player is facing.

I cast a ray infront with:
%res = containerRayCast(%start, %end, %mask, %player);
and this gives 7 numbers. The ID, The XYZ position and the XYZ rotation of the face that the ray hit.

The setTransform function needs 7 numbers to be given to it, the XYZ position and the XYZW rotation.

How do you convert the 3 number rotation to the correct 4 number rotation?
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Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
#1
10/23/2012 (12:01 pm)
I've got a feeling that the normal is a vector ... alas I am in "art" mode and not "math" mode so that's not much help. There was an ancient (TGE1.3 or less) library.cs function file that should be "somewhere" in the resources section or one of the external upload sites - it's filled with math functions, which may or may not be of help.

[edit]
library_functions_Torque.zip

Not sure if useful or not.

Torque Owner A F
Default Studio Name
#2
10/23/2012 (6:43 pm)
Thanks Steve. There are lots of useful functions in there, somehow not the one for doing this though.

I found my problem, I had it working originally, in theory.

I made this:
DefineEngineMethod( SceneObject, setRot, void, ( VectorF rot ),,
   "Set the object's rotation.\n"
   "@param rot objects new VectorF rotation\n" )
{
	MatrixF mat;
	mat = object->getTransform();

	mat.setColumn(1, rot);

	object->setTransform(mat);
}

which seemed to me like it should work but wasn't really doing anything.

I was creating a static shape and running this function on it was scaling it. The numbers that were being used from the raycast were fairly similar so I didn't notice the scaling and thought it just wasn't rotating.

When I use a player object instead it rotates correctly to match teh face of the model that the ray cast hits.

Torque Owner Dimitris Matsouliadis
Dimitris Matsouliadis
#3
10/24/2012 (12:38 am)
A simple way to do this is the player transform.
Get player rotation or transform and do rotation +-180 degrees.

Torque script step in radians, you can have a value between 0 and 2PI.
Conversion help: (equivalence decimal)
0 radians = -2PI radians.
PI radians = -3PI/2 radians.

example: (z 180 degree rotation)
%objTransform = %object.getTransform();
%tryRotation = "0 0 0 0 0 1 " @ mDegToRad(180);
%newTransform = matrixMultiply(%objTransform, %tryRotation);
%object.setTransform(%newTransform);