three.js: Y-rotation of group, relative to camera - three.js

Even after hours of googling, I can't really get my head around this. Maybe somebody here can help me a bit with this.
I basically want to determine the Y-rotation of an object (that is always in the viewport's center), relative to my camera. Imagine the object standing on the center of a record player/turntable, that slowly rotates around its Y axis, and my camera always facing the center of that object while using OrbitControls to change the cam's position around the object. Imagine the camera not moving, but the turntable turning, one revolution equals this Y rotation to be between 0° and 360°.
For example, this Y rotation would be:
0° when cam's position is [x=0, y=0, z=100], or [x=0, y=100, z=200] (the cam's y position doesn't matter, it always looks down/up to the group's center),
45° when cam's position is [x=100, y=0, z=100] or [x=100, y=200, z=100],
90° when cam's position is [x=100, y=0, z=0] or [x=200, y=100, z=0], etc.
Thing is, both of these can have some pretty random positions & rotations in the world coordinate system, so it's not given that the object's position is [x=0, y=0, z=0].
Any ideas? Thanks a lot!

I'm not sure if I'm being helpful, but perhaps Object3D.getWorldQuaternion and Quaternion.angleTo() might help?
something like :
const cameraQuaternion = new THREE.Quaternion();
camera.getWorldQuaternion(cameraQuaternion);
const targetQuaternion = new THREE.Quaternion();
target.getWorldQuaternion(targetQuaternion);
const delta = cameraQuaternion.angleTo(targetQuaternion);
const euler = new THREE.Euler().setFromQuaternion(delta);
console.log(euler.y / Math.PI * 180);

Related

Three.js - change camera POV on click

Some project background:
I have a Sprite particle field that is randomly generated. The camera is located at position 0, 0, 0. The particle field is all around the camera. I'm using Raycaster to be able to select the particle that is clicked on and change it's color. Once clicked I would like the camera to focus on this particle. I'm also attempting to use Tween to glide the particle into view.
I've attempted several different methods and none of them work. They are described here:
A traditional lookAt method that used Raycaster to pick up the intersect point from clicking.
var raycaster = new THREE.Raycaster();
raycaster.setFromCamera(mouse, this.camera);
var intersects = raycaster.intersectObjects( this.starfield.children );
this.camera.lookAt(intersects[0].object.position)
A distanceTo method where the distance between the camera and the intersect coordinates is used to move the camera. This only moves the camera along the z plane. It wont actually change its POV.
var cameraPosition = new THREE.Vector3(this.camera.position.x, this.camera.position.y, this.camera.position.z);
var intersectPosition = new THREE.Vector3(intersects[0].object.position.x, intersects[0].object.position.y , intersects[0].object.position.z );
var zoomPos = intersectPosition.distanceTo( cameraPosition );
const newCameraPosition = cameraPosition.addVectors(this.camera.position, vector.setLength(zoomPos));
I calculated the angle of rotation for each X, Y, and Z axis via tan and cos equations. I then attempted to rotate the camera by those degrees. I even tried converting them to radians to see if that would make a difference with the rotation method. It didnt :(
I don't know what else to do. At this stage I'm completely open to a different approach as long as I get this camera working. I'm very stuck,
any help would be greatly appreciated!
Instead of using
intersects[0].object.position
try using
intersects[0].point
.point is the world space position of the hit.
.objectis the object the triangle belongs to. .object.position is just the origin of that object, in this case the particle system. The particle positions themselves are relative to this origin.

Get screen coordinates of a vertex in a THREE.js Points object using bufferGeometry

I want to have a DOM node track a particle in my THREE.js simulation. My simulation is built with the Points object, using a bufferGeometry. I'm setting the positions of each vertex in the render loop. Over the course of the simulation I'm moving / rotating both the camera and the Points object (through its parent Object3d).
I can't figure out how to get reliable screen coordinates for any of my particles. I've followed the instructions on other questions, like Three.JS: Get position of rotated object, and Converting World coordinates to Screen coordinates in Three.js using Projection, but none of them seem to work for me. At this point I can see that the calculated projections of the vertices are changing with my camera movements and object rotations, but not in a way that I can actually map to the screen. Also, sometimes two particles that neighbor each other on the screen will yield wildly different projected positions.
Here's my latest attempt:
const { x, y, z } = layout.getNodePosition(nodes[nodeHoverTarget].id)
var m = camera.matrixWorldInverse.clone()
var mw = points.matrixWorld.clone()
var p = camera.projectionMatrix.clone()
var modelViewMatrix = m.multiply(mw)
var position = new THREE.Vector3(x, y, z)
var projectedPosition = position.applyMatrix4(p.multiply(modelViewMatrix))
console.log(projectedPosition)
Essentially I've replicated the operations in my shader to derive gl_Position.
projectedPosition is where I'd like to store the screen coordinates.
I'm sorry if I've missed something obvious... I've tried a lot of things but so far nothing has worked :/
Thanks in advance for any help.
I figured it out...
var position = new THREE.Vector3(x, y, z)
var projectedPosition = position.applyMatrix4(points.matrixWorld).project(camera)

Bring point to nearest camera position by camera rotation

I have a scene in Three.js (r67) with a camera that is controlled by OrbitControls.
If I now select an arbitrary point (Vector3) in the scene, what would be the best way to bring this point (programmatically) to the nearest camera position just by rotating the camera?
Example Scenario
In the below picture the left side is the starting point. The camera rotates around the green sphere (like OrbitControls) where the center of the camera is the center of the sphere. I now like to automatically rotate the camera around the sphere (doing the minimum amount of moves) so that the red box is nearest to the camera (like on the right side).
Independntly to the method of selecting the point in the scene, there's several understanding to what you mean by "bringing camera just by rotating".
I suppose, You want to rotate the camera in the way, to make the selected point in the center of the screen.
This is simple:
camera.lookAt(your_point_in_scene);
You could do this more complicated. Firstly, find the current pointing vector. By default camera looks in direction Vector(0,0,1). When we rotate it in the same rotation as a camera, we will have camera direction:
var vec = new THREE.Vector3(0,0,1);
vec.applyQuaternion(camera.rotation._quaternion);
Now we must determine angle to rotate our camera, and axis, around which we would rotate.
Axis of rotation could be found as a cross product of camera direction and vector from camera to object. Angel could be extracted from dot product:
var object_dir = object_world_point.clone().sub(camera.position);
var axis = vec.clone().crossProduct(object_dir);
var angle = Math.acos( vec.clone().dot(object_dir) / vec.length() / object_dir.length());
Having angle and axis, we could rotate camera:
camera.rotateOnAxis(axis, angle);
Or, if you want to make it smooth:
// before animation started
var total_rotation = 0,
rotateon,
avel = 0.01; // 0.01 radian per second
if(total_rotation < angle){
rotateon = avel * time_delta;
camera.rotateOnAxis(axis, angle);
total_rotation += rotateon;
}
Well that's not hard Oo
You have a center/target point for the camera. You calculate the difference from the target position to the point position and normalize that vector to the length of the camera-centerpoint-distance (i.e. something like pointdistance.multiplyScalar(cameradistance.length() / pointdistance.length()) ).
And that's it. If I understood your question correctly. All you do is "extend" the point's positioni onto your "camera movement dome" and then you have the ideal new camera position. The camera's rotation is done automatic since you always target the center point.
Aaand if you want to smoothen the camera movement a bit you can just interpolate the angle (not the positions directly) with e.g. an exponential function, whatever you prefer.
Hi Dear please follow this
Independntly to the method of selecting the point in the scene, there's several understanding to what you mean by "bringing camera just by rotating".
I suppose, You want to rotate the camera in the way, to make the selected point in the center of the screen.
This is simple:
camera.lookAt(your_point_in_scene);
You could do this more complicated. Firstly, find the current pointing vector. By default camera looks in direction Vector(0,0,1). When we rotate it in the same rotation as a camera, we will have camera direction:
var vec = new THREE.Vector3(0,0,1);
vec.applyQuaternion(camera.rotation._quaternion);
Now we must determine angle to rotate our camera, and axis, around which we would rotate.
Axis of rotation could be found as a cross product of camera direction and vector from camera to object.
Angle could be extracted from dot product:
var object_dir = object_world_point.clone().sub(camera.position);
var axis = vec.clone().crossProduct(object_dir);
var angle = Math.acos( vec.clone().dot(object_dir) / vec.length() / object_dir.length());

Spawn particle at edge of screen

I've searched far and wide, so if there's a similar question please forgive me but I just couldn't find it.
To put what I'm trying to do in context: I want to create an infinitely-generated field of stars that disappear as they go offscreen and reappear at the edge of the screen where the camera is moving. I'm working with a top-down view, so it must be pretty simple to achieve this, but alas I haven't a clue.
I'm using the following code to determine whether a star has gone off-screen and then replace it:
//update camera frustum
camera.projScreenMatrix.multiplyMatrices(
camera.projectionMatrix,
camera.matrixWorldInverse
);
camera.frustum.setFromMatrix(camera.projScreenMatrix);
//loop through stars
var stars=scene.stars.geometry.vertices;
for(var i=0;i<stars.length;i++) {
if(!camera.frustum.containsPoint(stars[i])) {
stars[i]=new THREE.Vector3(
// fill in the blank
);
scene.stars.geometry.verticesNeedUpdate=true;
}
}
Since I'm using a perspective camera, I know I'll need to somehow factor in camera.fov and other perspective elements, but as you can tell I'm no expert on the third dimension.
Assuming I have an angle or normalized vector telling me the direction the view is panning, how would I go about creating a vertex along the edge of the screen regardless of its Z position?
If I'm not clear enough, I'll be happy to clarify. Thanks.
I know this is an old question, but I came across it while looking for an answer and found a simple, trigonometry reliant method to get the left edge of the camera frustum, and I'm sharing it in case someone else might find it useful:
// Get half of the cameras field of view angle in radians
var fov = camera.fov / 180 * Math.PI / 2;
// Get the adjacent to calculate the opposite
// This assumes you are looking at the scene
var adjacent = camera.position.distanceTo( scene.position );
// Use trig to get the leftmost point (tangent = o / a)
var left = Math.tan( fov ) * adjacent * camera.aspect;
Basically, this gets the leftmost point, but if you don't multiply by the aspect ratio you should get a point in a circle around your camera frustum, so you could translate a point any direction away from the cameras focus and it would always be outside the frustum.
It works by assuming that the imaginary plane that is the camera is perpendicular to the line connecting the camera and its focus, so there is a straight angle. This should work if you want objects further away as well (so if you want them at a further point from the camera you just need to increase the distance between the focus and the camera).
Well, countless headaches and another question later, I've come up with a fairly makeshift answer. Just in case by some unlikely chance someone else has the same question, the following function plots a point on the scene relative to the camera's current view with whatever Z specified:
//only needs to be defined once
var projector=new THREE.Projector();
//input THREE.Vector3
function(vector) {
var z=vector.z;
vector.z=0;
projector.unprojectVector(vector,camera);
return camera.position.clone().add(
vector
.sub(camera.position)
.normalize()
.multiplyScalar(
-(camera.position.z-z)/vector.z
)
);
The x and y, in this case, both range from -1 to 1 for bottom-left to top-right. You can use position/window.Width and position/window.Height for extra precision (using mouse coordinates or what have you).

Three.js plane facing away from camera aligned with viewport

I'm trying to have a plane face away from the camera with same orientation so it's aligned in the viewport.
I have a plane in front of the camera, perfectly aligned to the cameras viewport, and I want to flip it in front of the camera, along the objects Y axis, regardless of camera orientation.
The following will orient my plane to face at the camera and works for any orientation:
target.rotation.copy(camera.rotation);
The following will then flip the plane along the plane's Y axis:
target.rotation.y += Math.PI;
All good so far? Except when the camera rotation has a funky tilt to it, let's say it's looking up and to the left, tilted slightly to the right, the plane's flip is tilted, but not the same way as the camera, leaving me with a plane tilted either to the left or right...
I've tried several things such as:
target.rotation.z -= camera.rotation.z;
Nothing... Thanks for your help.
So the problem I was running into was when the camera was in negative z coordinates. This causes the flip on the Y axis to get messed up.
So basically you would do something like this:
var target = new THREE.Object3D();
//position
target.position.copy(s.camera.position);
target.position.add(THREE.Utils.cameraLookDir(s.camera).multiplyScalar(300));
//rotation
target.rotation.copy(s.camera.rotation);
target.rotation.y += PI;
target.rotation.z = -s.camera.rotation.z;
if (s.camera.position.z < 0) {
target.rotation.z = s.camera.rotation.z;
}
EDIT:
Add the following to appropriate spots in your program.
camera.rotation.eulerOrder = 'XZY';
target.rotation.eulerOrder = 'XZY';
Seems to solve previously encountered tilt issues! (see below)
RESOLVED:
Flipped planes tilted the wrong way in some instances, for example when in negative z coords and also the y rotation is not equal to 0, example: point in space hovering and looking at 0, 0, 0.
This is the solution I was looking for when I found this page (taken from this answer):
mesh.lookAt( camera.position );
The local z-axis of the mesh should then point toward the camera.

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