Camera Pos/Quat <----> Pose

Discussion in 'Visualization' started by Luis Piloto, May 16, 2017.

  1. In the model XML files, cameras are defined with a position in the worldbody and a rotation attribute such as quat or axisangle. However, mjvCamera uses Pose (lookat, distance, azimuth, elevation). Is there a mujoco function, or other method, for converting back and forth between pos/quat and pose?
     
  2. Emo Todorov

    Emo Todorov Administrator Staff Member

    The conversion is done internally, but there is no utility function that you can call directly. You can do the math yourself, it involves a bunch of sin and cos functions. Actually the camera pose (lookat, distance, azimuth, elevation) can only encode a subset of possible body poses, because the camera cannot twist around the gaze axis. So the conversion is well-defined only in one direction.
     
  3. Sorry to revive an old thread!

    I was wondering whether the above guidance still holds true. A workflow where the free camera can be interactively positioned, then the (lookat, distance, azimuth, elevation) parameters recorded, and then converted to the Quaternion+Position form for defining in a model XML would be very useful. Often one would like to render offscreen but from a very particular viewpoint. Unless you dream in quaternions it can be hard to hone in on this viewpoint without interactive camera control as a first step.

    Many thanks!