Equation to calculate new object velocity(angle specifically) after reflection? - math

Hey I can't figure out what the equation to find the new angle of travel of an object is after reflecting off of a wall.... The angle of travel is also based off the unit circle so 0degrees would be traveling right, 180 traveling left, 270 down, etc.
Just making the angle negative doesn't work either, any tips?

I think this is what you're looking for. I added in the angle of the wall, even if you didn't need it.
reflectionAngle = wallAngle + ((wallAngle + 180) - (incidenceAngle + 180))
If the wall is just vertical, its angle would be 90 degrees.
I hope this helps, and good luck!
EDIT: As a more simplified method, posted by Casey below:
reflectionAngle = 2*wallAngle - incidenceAngle

You have to change the angle relative to the wall coordinate system (t, n) and then transform back to (x, y) coordinates. The wall coordinate n is perpendicular to the wall; the direction t is created by taking the cross-product of the t-vector into the z-direction.
The algorithm would say that the incoming (v_t, v_n) velocity are changed as follows:
perpendicular component v_n changes sign.
tangential component v_t is unchanged, assuming no friction.
Once you have those, transform back to (x, y) coordinates.
It's easy if you think in terms of 2D vectors.

It would be
outAngle = 360 - inAngle

Related

Converting XYZ to XY (world coords to screen coords)

Is there a way to convert that data:
Object position which is a 3D point (X, Y, Z),
Camera position which is a 3D point (X, Y, Z),
Camera yaw, pitch, roll (-180:180, -90:90, 0)
Field of view (-45°:45°)
Screen width & height
into the 2D point on the screen (X, Y)?
I'm looking for proper math calculations according to this exact set of data.
It's difficult, but it's possible to do it for yourself.
There are lots of libraries that do this for you, but it is more satisfying if you do it yourself:
This problem is possible and I have written my own 3D engine to do this for objects in javascript using the HTML5 Canvas. You can see my code here and solve a 3D maze game I wrote here to try and understand what I will talk about below...
The basic idea is to work in steps. To start, you have to forget about camera angle (yaw, pitch and roll) as these come later and just imagine you are looking down the y axis. Then the basic idea is to calculate, using trig, the pitch angle and yaw to your object coordinate. By this I mean imagining that you are looking through a letterbox, the yaw angle would be the angle in degrees left and right to your coordinate (so both positive and negative) from the center/ mid line and the yaw up and down from it. Taking these angles, you can map them to the x and y 2D coordinate system.
The calculations for the angles are:
pitch = atan((coord.x - cam.x) / (coord.y - cam.y))
yaw = atan((coord.z - cam.z) / (coord.y - cam.y))
with coord.x, coord.y and coord.z being the coordinates of the object and the same for the cam (cam.x, cam.y and cam.z). These calculations also assume that you are using a Cartesian coordinate system with the different axis being: z up, y forward and x right.
From here, the next step is to map this angle in the 3D world to a coordinate which you can use in a 2D graphical representation.
To map these angles into your screen, you need to scale them up as distances from the mid line. This means multiplying them by your screen width / fov. Finally, these distances will now be positive or negative (as it is an angle from the mid line) so to actually draw it on a canvas, you need to add it to half of the screen width.
So this would mean your canvas coordinate would be:
x = width / 2 + (pitch * (width / fov)
y = height / 2 + (yaw * (height / fov)
where width and height are the dimensions of you screen, fov is the camera's fov and yaw and pitch are the respective angles of the object from the camera.
You have now achieved the first big step which is mapping a 3D coordinate down to 2D. If you have managed to get this all working, I would suggest trying multiple points and connecting them to form shapes. Also try moving your cameras position to see how the perspective changes as you will soon see how realistic it already looks.
In addition, if this worked fine for you, you can move on to having the camera be able to not only change its position in the 3D world but also change its perspective as in yaw, pitch and roll angles. I will not go into this entirely now, but the basic idea is to use 3D world transformation matrices. You can read up about them here but they do get quite complicated, however I can give you the calculations if you get this far.
It might help to read (old style) OpenGL specs:
https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/specs/gl/glspec14.pdf
See section 2.10
Also:
https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Vertex_Transformation
Might help with more concrete examples.
Also, for "proper math" look up 4x4 matrices, projections, and homogeneous coordinates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_coordinates

3d rotation around the origin

I know there are plenty of questions about 3d rotation that have been answered here but all of them seem to deal with rotational matrices and quaternions in OpenGL (and I don't really care if I get gimbal lock). I need to get 3d coordinates EX:(x,y,z) of a point that always must be the same distance, I'll call it "d" for now, from the origin. The only information I have as input is the deltax and deltay of the mouse across the screen. So far here is what I have tried:
First:
thetaxz+=(omousex-mouseX)/( width );
thetaxy+=(omousey-mouseY)/( height);
(thetaxy is the angle in radians on the x,y axis and thetaxz on the x,z axis)
(I limit both angles so that if they are less than or equal to 0 they equal 2*PI)
Second:
pointX=cos(thetaxz)*d;
pointY=sin(thetaxy)*d;
(pointX is the point's x coordinate and pointY is the y)
Third:
if(thetaxz)<PI){
pointZ=sqrt(sq(d)-sq(eyeX/d)-sq(eyeY/d));
}else{
pointZ=-sqrt(abs(sq(d)-sq(eyeX/d)-sq(eyeY/d)));
}
(sq() is a function that squares and abs() is an absolute value function)
(pointZ should be the point's z coordinate and it is except at crossing between the positive z hemisphere and negative z hemisphere. As it approaches the edge the point gets stretched further than the distance that it is always supposed to be at in the x and y and seemingly randomly around 0.1-0.2 radians of thetaxz the z coordinate becomes NAN or undefined)
I have thought about this for awhile, and truthfully I'm having difficulty warping my head around the concept of quaternions and rotational matrices however if you can show me how to use them to generate actual coordinates I would be glad to learn. I would still prefer it if I could just use some trigonometry in a few axis. Thank you in advance for any help and if you need more information please just ask.
Hint/last minute idea: I think it may have something to do with the z position affecting the x and y positions back but I am not sure.
EDIT: I drew a diagram:
If you truly want any success in this, you're going to have to bite the bullet and learn about rotation matrices and / or quaternion rotations. There may be other ways to do what you want, but rotation matrices and quaternion rotations are used simply because they are widely understood and among the simplest means of expressing and applying rotations to vectors. Any other representation somebody can come up with will probably be a more complex reformulation of one or both of these. In fact it can be shown rotation is a linear transformation and so can be expressed as a matrix. Quaternion rotations are just a simplified means of rotating vectors in 3D, and therefore have equivalent matrix representations.
That said, it sounds like you're interested in grabbing an object in your scene with a mouse click and rotating in a natural sort of way. If that's the case, you should look at the ArcBall method (there are numerous examples you may want to look over). This still requires you know something of quaternions. You will also find that an at least minimal comprehension of the basic aspects of linear algebra will be helpful.
Update: Based on your diagram and the comments it contains, it looks like all you are really trying to do is to convert Spherical Coordinates to Cartesian Coordinates. As long as we agree on the the notation, that's easy. Let θ be the angle you're calling XY, that is, the angle between the X axis rotated about the Z axis; this is called the azimuth angle and will be in the range [0, 2π) radians or [0°, 360°). Let Φ be an angle between the XY plane and your vector; this is called the elevation angle and will be in the range [-π/2, +π/2] or [-90°, +90°] and it corresponds to the angle you're calling the XZ angle (rotation in the XZ plane about the Y axis). There are other conventions, so make sure you're consistent. Anyway, the conversion is simply:
x = d∙cos(Φ)∙cos(θ)
y = d∙cos(Φ)∙sin(θ)
z = d∙sin(Φ)

Get length of opposite from adjacent and angle

Im trying to determine where a "shot" will hit the wall from a position and an angle.
The player shoots a ball from a certain point with a certain angle towards a wall. And I want to be able to determine if the ball will hit within the bounds of the goal.
This is what i know:
origin: the ball's coordinates
length: the distance to the wall
angle: the angle of the shot
This is what i want to calculate:
point: the position the ball will have when it hits the wall
Thanks in advance!
unless i'm missing something:
point y = origin y + length
point x = origin x - length * tan(angle)
in Trig for a right angled triangle Tan(angle) = opposite/adjacent.
This should be all you need to get your position.
It should be noted that this is not a programming question as such and there are probably other places for Maths questions like this. :)

Need equations for a parametric parabola + the angle of the tangent at any given time

This may be ridiculously obvious, but math wasn't my strong suit in school. I've been banging my head against the wall long enough that I finally figured I'd ask.
I'm trying to animate a sprite moving along a 2D parabolic path, from point A to point B. Both points are at the same y-coordinate. The desired height of the parabola from the starting/ending y-coordinate is also given (or, if you prefer, a desired velocity). Currently in my code I have a timer firing at a high frequency. I would like to calculate the new location of the ball based on the amount of time that has passed. So a parametric parabola equation should work nicely.
I found this answer from GameDev adequate, until my requirements grew (although I'm not sure its really a parabolic path... I can't follow the derivation of the final equations there provided). Now I would like to squish/stretch the sprite at different points along the parabolic path. But to get the effect to work right, I'll need to rotate the sprite so that it's primary axis is tangential to the path. So I need to be able to derive the angle of the tangent at any given location/time.
I can find all sorts of equations for each of these requirements (parametric parabola, tangent at a point, etc.), but I just can't figure out how to unify them all. Could someone with more math skills help a fellow coder out and provide a set of equations that will work? Thanks ever so much in advance.
What you are missing is this:
Slope = TAN(angle) // in radians
What is the slope? It is how much up/down you move per how much across you move ( dy/dx on some other answers ). For you it is actually (dy/dt)/(dx/dt) since both x and y are functions of time.
So for a trajectory x(t)=Vx*t and y(t)=Vy*t-1/2*g*t^2 the slope is Slope=(Vy-g*t)/Vx where Vx is the initial horizontal velocity, and Vy the initial vertical velocity. g is the gravity (vertical acceleration down). So your rotation in degrees shall be
angle = ATAN( (Vy-g*t)/Vx ) * 180/PI
Basically the slope is equal to the ratio of vertical velocity to horizontal velocity.
Let X be the distance from A to B, Y the desired height of the parabola, V the horizontal speed.
x = Vt
y = Y - (4Y/X^2) (X/2-Vt)^2
tangent dy/dx = (8Y/X^2) (X/2-Vt)

How to get Yaw, Pitch and Roll from a 3D vector

I have a direction vector that applied to a position gives me the point at which the camera should look. How can I get from that yaw, pitch and roll in order to use glRotatef properly?
Thanks in advance
None of these equations are 'wrong' but all are a little clumsy.
Ryder052, you example does not account certain cases as you've commented. Why not use atan2?
Given unit (normalized) direction vector d
pitch = asin(-d.Y);
yaw = atan2(d.X, d.Z)
You cannot get yaw, pitch and roll from a direction vector as the direction vector will only tell which direction to look in (yaw and pitch)
To get the yaw and pitch you use trigonometry - I assume you have some working knowledge. Check out this wiki page for some useful diagrams to visualize the angles.
Letting Y = yaw, P = pitch.
First to get yaw you want:
tan(Y) = x/(-y)
Now to get pitch:
tan(P) = sqrt(x^2 + y^2)/z
To get the actual values for Y and P you'll need to use inverse tan, I've written it above using tan to make the derivation clearer.
Note that the minus signs depend on how you define you angles and axes, but you should get the idea.
You can then set roll to be 0 or whatever you like.
You probably don't actually want the yaw, pitch and roll. You just need the correct transformation. Try using gluLookAt to build it. Documentation.
pheelicks's equations are wrong. Dear future googlers, here you got what's working:
Assuming pitch: rotation by X axis, yaw: rotation by Y axis, roll: rotation by Z axis. Direction vector V(x,y,z)
pitch = asin(V.y / length(V));
yaw = asin( V.x / (cos(pitch)*length(V)) ); //Beware cos(pitch)==0, catch this exception!
roll = 0;
Well, I am not sure what any of these answers are about because I could not get any of them to work.
I created my own solution...
// get world target offset
// convert world target offset to world direction normal
// get my world transposed (inverted)
// rotate world direction normal to my space normal
Vector3D lWorldTargetOffset = gWorldTargetLocation - gWorldMyLocation;
Vector3D lWorldTargetDirection = lWorldTargetOffset.Normalize();
MatrixD lMyWorldTransposed = MatrixD.Transpose(MyWorldMatrix);
Vector3D lMySpaceTargetDirection = Vector3D.Rotate(lWorldTargetDirection, lMyWorldTransposed);
you now have the world target direction normal in my space
lMySpaceTargetDirection.X = pitch
lMySpaceTargetDirection.Y = yaw.
lMySpaceTargetDirection.Z = <0 infront >0 behind.
As per direction normals all values are -1 to 1 so if you want degrees simply * 90.
Not saying this is the best solution but it is the only one I could get to work after spending hours searching online and wading through copious amounts of obtuse and nebulous crud.
I hope you, someone, or anyone, will enjoy simply rotating the target direction normal making it relative to myspace, and find it easy and helpful :)

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