gimbal lock

[guptan]

hi all,
can anyone explain what is gimbal lock. i tried many tutorials. but all of 'em were confusing.
tia
>guptan

[Specchum]

Gimbal lock occurs when using Euler angles for your rotations. The problem is that the evaluation of the axis of rotations is done in a set order and independent of each other.The order of rotation is usually, Y, X & Z but isn't necessarily so.

This is one of the decent explanations on the subject that I know of:
http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/omniv/eulers_are_evil.html

While quaternions are often cited as the best solution to the above problem, you can actually stick to Euler angles if you aren't doing anything fancy. For eg, a workaround which is often used when implementing an FPS camera is to restrict pitch and roll to +/- 89 degrees, while there is no restriction on the yaw.

[KC_SkeletalMesh]

True,

There is a little bit of additional computation involved when you use Quaternions. As in, calls to convert a Matrix to Quaternion and then back.

Quaternions are more often used for Skeletal Animation, Spherical Interpolation, etc.

Camera math, Game Object/ Scene Node orientations, can be done wtih Euler angles, safely.

[guptan]

when spherical interpolation is used in games?

[Specchum]

Whenever you need to smoothly interpolate along an arc that connects 2 quaternion.

[guptan]

The article Quaternion Powers by Sobeit Void hosted in gamedev.net, is an excellent one for understandig quaternions and gimbal lock. Here is the link
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...rticle1095.asp
I posted this for our readers.

[chand81]

Here is an interesting link to understand gimbal & gimbal lock better.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/gimbals.html

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