3-D ROTATIONS

USING EULER ANGLES

INTRODUCTION

• The concept of coordinate transformations in 3-D is the same as in 2-

D, however, the mathematics are more complicated.

• The great eighteenth-century mathematician Leonhard Euler proved

that an arbitrary 3-D rotation can be obtained by three individual
rotations around the axes (X, Y, Z).

• In his honor, the angles of the rotations are called Euler angles.
Convention For Vehicle Rotation Orientation
• Yaw along Y axis (down)
• Pitch along Z axis (right)
• Roll along X axis (forward)
 3-D EULER ROTATION (90°)
UP Y X
IN Y

LEFT RIGHT Y
X
X
OUT Z Z
DOWN Z

Y Y

X Y
X

X X
Y Z
Z Z
Z
Right-Hand Rule
By convention, there are three (3) rotation forms in 3D;
1) Rotate from X to Y around Z,
2) Rotate from Y to Z around X,
3) Rotate from Z to X around Y.
Y Z X

X Y Z

Z X Y
1) 2) 3)
 Multiple Rotations Y X

1) 90° around the Z - axis X Y

2) 90° around the Y - axis

Z Z
3) 90° around the X - axis 1) Final
(In, Up, Right)
Y
X
Z Y
Z
X
X X X
Y
Y Z
Z Y
Original Z
2) 3)
Commutativity Fails
90° around Z, 90° around X 90° around X, 90° around Z

Y X
Y

X Y X
X

Y
Z Z Z
Z
X X

X Y
Y Z
Y X
Z Z
Z Y
( Up, Out, Right ) ( Out, Left,
Representing Orientations

There are several popular options to encode orientation:

• Euler angles
• Quaternions
• Rotation vectors (axis/angle)
• 3x3 matrices
Euler Angles
We can represent an orientation with 3 numbers
• A sequence of rotations around principal axes is called
an Euler Angle Sequence
Assume we limit ourselves to 3 rotations
• no successive rotations about the same axis
• we could use any of the following 12 sequences
to specify an orientation
XYZ XZY XYX XZX
YXZ YZX YXY YZY
ZXY ZYX ZXZ ZYZ
Applying an Euler Angle Sequence

Which axes are being rotated around in this sequence?

M=RzRxRy
This is a very commonly used order…
Euler Angles
• As in Virtual Reality by Lavalle we will define
• Roll
• rotation about z
• Pitch
• rotation about x
• Yaw
• rotation about y
• Orientation
• Rz(roll) Rx(pitch) Ry(yaw)
 Euler Angles to Matrix Conversion
To build a matrix from a set of Euler angles
just multiply a sequence of rotation matrices together:

é ù é cy 0 s y ù é cz - sz 0 ù
ê1 0 0 úê úê ú
R x ×R y ×R z =ê 0 cx - sx ú×ê 0 1 0 ú×ê sz cz 0 ú
ê úê 0 cy ú ê 0 ú
ë 0 sx cx û ê - sy ú 0 1 ú
ë ûêë û
é c y cz - c y sz sy ù
ê ú Why would we
care about being
=ê sx sy cz + c x sz - s x s y s z + c x cz - s x cy ú able to convert to

ê ú a matrix ?

ê - c s c +s s
ë x y z x z
c x s y sz + s x c z cx cy ú
û
Euler Angles…Good and Bad
• Euler angles can generate any possible orientation in 3D (Good!)

• Euler angles are used in a lot of applications …they are intuitive (Good!)

• They are compact…requiring only 3 numbers (Good!)

• Ambiguous: different triples can be same orientation (Bad!)

• They do not interpolate in a obvious way (Bad!)

• They can suffer from Gimbal lock (Bad! But not as bad as it sounds)

• Conversion to/from a matrix requires several trig operations (Bad!)

Gimbal Lock y

• Airplane orientation
• Rz(roll) Rx(pitch) Ry(yaw)
• Two axes have collapsed onto each other x

• Think about this from a user-interface perspective -z

Imagine you have 3 dials…one for each angle

What action caused the orientation you see?
What happens when z dial is moved now?

What problem could this cause for someone

playing a game with this interface?
 Gimbal Lock
Problem if your camera view is a sequence of rotation matrices

User input to rotate around Y and Z do the same thing in the example below

Can break a user interface….

….you can reverse the lock, but may not be obvious to the user how to do it
References
• https://books.google.com/books?
id=CDgrYqDsSBAC&lpg=PR5&ots=KcaYTK2TFe&dq=John%20Vince.
%20Quaternions%20for%20Computer%20Graphics%2C
%202011%2C%20Springer.&lr&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false
THANK YOU