Drawing XYZ axis

[ldmegs]

Hi,

I'm trying to draw a set of XYZ axis in the corner of the screen which will show the orientation. I want these to rotate when the rest of my scene rotates, but to stay in the same position when I translate my scene. i can draw the axis fine although when I move the scene they also move.

any suggestions much appreciated

Cheers

[Jared@ETC]

glRotate*(x...)
glRotate*(y...)
glRotate*(z...)

glPushMatrix()

glTranslate*(x,y,z)

Draw_Scene()

glPopMatrix()

Draw_XYZ_Axis()

[mehmet sirin]

Hi,

7 years later I try to do the same!
I want a little coordinate system in the left corner of my canvas that shows the current rotation of the world coordinate system. That means: only the rotating stuff is effecting the three drawn axis, whereas everything that is not related to rotating for instance translating or zooming should not do anything to the little coordinate system, so it stays forever there in the corner.
how would you realize it?. I am using webgl (opengl es 2.0).


cheeeers!

[Dark Photon]

Take unit axis vectors, multiply by modelview, normalize (in case modelview has scales).

If your modelview doesn't have scales or shears, you can just grab the axis vectors out of the upper-left 3x3. Same as multiply by unit vectors.

[mehmet sirin]

Take unit axis vectors, multiply by modelview, normalize (in case modelview has scales).

If your modelview doesn't have scales or shears, you can just grab the axis vectors out of the upper-left 3x3. Same as multiply by unit vectors.

what? i thought this a beginner forum..
not i don't have any scales or shears in my mvmatrix.

can someone explain in more detail pleae ?

thank you

[Ilian Dinev]

Your modelview matrix:

R R R t
R R R t
R R R t
t t t t

Copy the R parts into a 3x3 matrix.
Multiply that matrix by vectors vec3(1,0,0), vec3(0,1,0), vec3(0,0,1). The results will be 3 vec3 vectors, rotated the way you want.
Also, you'll note those vectors are identical with columns from the matrix. (that's why Dark Photon mentioned you can simply use those columns)

Setup the projection to be orthographic or whatever, and set the viewport to cover only a small area from the bottom-left or wherever you want the axes to be drawn.

Draw 3 lines, starting from vec3(0,0,0) and ending with each of those 3 vectors you calculated before. Done


P.S. if you had scales and shears, you'd simply have to normalize the 3 vectors (otherwise - if you're just doing rotation and translation, they happen to be already normalized)

[mehmet sirin]

thank you for explaining that, now everything is much clearer!

Setup the projection to be orthographic or whatever, and set the viewport to cover only a small area from the bottom-left or wherever you want the axes to be drawn.

that means i have to set multiple viewports?

[Ilian Dinev]

Not really. It's kinda like "okay gpu, now I'll draw only on this rectangle". Don't forget to restore the viewport ASAP, though; nasties happen otherwise .
The alternative would be to create a nice projection/modelview matrix that will transform everything to the specific corner. It's preferable, but I can't compose/recall the maths for it right now.

[mehmet sirin]

Setup the projection to be orthographic or whatever, and set the viewport to cover only a small area from the bottom-left or wherever you want the axes to be drawn.

Don't forget to restore the viewport ASAP

I'm failing setting up this steps.. how do I set only a small area of the viewport and when to do it?

[Ilian Dinev]

glViewport(0,0,100,100);