Apply a transformation matrix over time - math

Question

I have an initial frame and a bounding box around some information. I have a transformation matrix T, for which I want to use to transform this bounding box.
I could easily apply the transformation and draw it in the output frame, but I would like to apply the transformation over a sequence of x frames, can anyone suggest a way to do this?
Aly

Answer 1

Building on #egor-n comment, you could compute R = T^{1/x} and compute your bounding box on frame i+1 from the one at frame i by
B_{i+1} = R * B_{i}
with B_{0} your initial bounding box. Depending on the precise form of T, we could discuss how to compute R.

Answer 2

There are methods for affine transforms - to make decomposition of affine transform matrix to product of translation, rotation, scaling and shear matrices, and linear interpolation of parameters of every matrix (for example, rotation angle for R and so on). Example
But for homography matrix there is no single solution, as described here, so one can find some "good" approximation (look at complex math in that article). Probably, some limitations for possible transforms could simplify the problem.

Answer 3

Here's something a little different you could try. Let M be the matrix representing the final transformation. You could try interpolating between I (the identity matrix, with 1's on the diagonal and 0's elsewhere) using the formula
M(t) = exp(t * ln(M))
where t is time from 0 to 1, M(0) = I, M(1) = M, exp is the exponential function for matrices given by the usual infinite series, and ln is the similar natural logarithm function for matrices given by the usual infinite series.
The correctness of the formula depends on the type of transformation represented by M and the type of transformations allowed in intermediate steps. The formula should work for rigid motions. For other types of transformations, various bad things might happen, including divergence of the logarithm series. Other formulas can be used in other cases; let me know if you're using transformations other than rigid motions and I can give some other formulas.
The exponential and logarithm functions may be available in a matrix library. If not, they can be easily implemented as partial sums of infinite series.
The above method should give the same result as some quaternion methods in the case of rotations. The quaternion methods are probably faster when they're available.
UPDATE
I see you mention elsewhere that your transformation is a homography (perspectivity), so the method I suggested above for rigid motions won't work. Instead you could use a different, but related method outlined in ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/users/aristo/papers/SYGRAPH2005/sig05.pdf. It goes as follows: represent your transformation by a matrix in one higher dimension. Scale the matrix so that its determinant is equal to 1. Call the resulting matrix G. You want to interpolate from the identity matrix I to G, going through perspectivities.
In what follows, let M^T be the transpose of M. Let the function expp be defined by
expp(M) = exp(-M^T) * exp(M+M^T)
You need to find the inverse of that function at G; in other words you need to solve the equation
expp(M) = G
where G is your transformation matrix with determinant 1. Call the result M = logp(G). That equation can be solved by standard numerical techniques, or you can use Matlab or other math software. It's somewhat time-consuming and complicated to do, but you only have to do it once.
Then you calculate the series of transformations by
G(t) = expp(t * logp(G))
where t varies from 0 to 1 in steps of 1/k, where k is the number of frames you want.

Answer 4

You could parameterize the transform over some number of frames by adding a variable with a domain greater than zero but less than 1.
Let t be the frame number
Let T be the total number of frames
Let P be the original location and orientation of the object
Let theta be the total rotation angle
and translation be the vector [x,y]'
The transform in 2D becomes:
T(P|t) = R(t)*P +(t*[x,y]')/T
where R(t) = {{Cos((theta*t)/T),-Sin((theta*t)/T)},{Sin((theta*t)/T),Cos((theta*t)/T)}}
So that at frame t_n you apply the transform T(t) to the position of the object at time t_0 = 0 (which is equivalent to no transform)