Tutorial: Orientation Matrix - basics explained.

I had some free time on my hands (a rare occasion), so I wrote this tut:

http://socialstorage.googlepages.com/orientationmatrix-basics

All feedback is welcome, as always. Also, if anyone wants to host a copy on their own site (or anywhere else for that matter), feel free to do so.

I hope this helps someone.

this is nice ! even for non blender programmer is very usefull

thanks

This helps me out a lot. Without really taking the time to examine it, the matrix looks like a mathematical nightmare. After reading that, it makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

~~Stu

i have never used those matrices , and now i will do so :smiley:
thanks Social .

Very nice, simple to understand. I only read it though and didnt play with it. Its too late at night, I will play tomorrow.

Only things I had to stop and think about:

Some matrix illustrations didnt show the XYZ, and the xyz labels. It helps to have them there while working through the tut.

And the circle, maybe might be a half sphere instead or a whole sphere? dont know its been so very long since I even thought of this stuff.

Anyway, thanks very much.

Could you please check you link? I am getting a 404

Very nice, thank you. I just finished trig a few days ago, and never got to matrices (last chapter of the book). This seemed to be the better way of learning it anyways. :wink: Excellent layout, simple to learn, thoroughly understood it in under 45 minutes.
Thank you.

Hmm, we learned matrix math in computer math, not trig. Interesting. Wait till you learn to solve a matrix of equations, its really a lot of fun, and goes really fast when you get the hang of it.

Call me stupid but I wasn’t able to get this very well, it also has trigonometry, which I haven’t took any classes of. I get that a radian is 100 divided by pi though.

Unrelated, I took geometry once, but I often went into breakdowns saying I couldn’t do it so me and my teacher stopped.

Slink: Computer math, I wish we had such a thing in our school

Cyborg: Actually a radian is (pi/180)*degrees. pi = 180 deg

Nice tut Social…
Thanks

Heh, yea, me too.

Btw, thank you for the compliments. The 2 characteristics you list there (layout, simplicity) were high priorities for me when I wrote this. I’m glad some of that shows.

Well let’s take this in account first:

You believe that you were a dragon in your previous life, and that now (even though in human form) you still possess the soul of a “dragon”.

…I doubt that your confusion stems from some flaw in the documentation. However, if you could provide some specifics as to what you still don’t understand, then maybe I (or someone else) could help you.

Just “breakdowns”?

I’m impressed.

@Everyone:

I appreciate the feedback.

I mean it seems the best I would be able to do is toot around with matrix values and see what it does, I don’t understand the whole mechanism behind that. I do however get some BGE python though and after a while I can take apart and understand BGE .blend files. I can eventually find out what the values do without understanding the whole equation.

I know what PI is, it’s a value used in circle math. Pretty easy. I have worked with slope calculation before though I can’t seem to solidly remember the formula.

You believe that you were a dragon in your previous life, and that now (even though in human form) you still possess the soul of a “dragon”.

Know one thing I died a young Dragon and never became a wise elder or anything (I seem to prove that by often acting like a youngling), and I spent my whole previous life with my Dragon parents. I know one thing that not every Dragon in human form is stupid, I got a high score on my IQ test myself, but that didn’t involve math.

This is why I don’t understand your confusion, because the tutorial pretty much does that for you - with very simplified explanations to boot.

Are you sure you followed the entire tutorial procedure?

Well, I can still say, take an example code and change a value and figure out what the value does.

Like a sine wave movement code, I don’t need to know and understand the whole equation, I just need to know how the numbers affect it.

Well done mate!

In the future, please choose text colors that contrast the background colors.

Please have your “end reader” in mind… Making them squint and change the font size is not a nice thing to do.

lol,
Just joking,
touche

I am a physicist and I need time, patience and a beer to understand how it works.

And everytime I use rotation again, I need 30 min to remember again how it works.

So don’t get frustrated if you (anyone) don’t understand the whole thing.

great tutorial This is the by far the easiest way I could think of to explain the blender orientation matrix. If you don’t understand this tutorial, you can’t understand matrices. I defiantly think this should be stickied.

thanks for the great tut social! more more more :wink:

Nice tutorial social, it finally makes sense!
these orientation matrices have really been what’s holding me back in Blender… it’s about time I learned what there all about. now I can go back and finish all of my half-done games!
cheers