I am trying to sample uniformly from the set of all point (x,y,z) such that x+y+z = 0 and -1<=x<=1, -1<=y<=1 and -1<=z<=1.
My idea was the following: I sampled uniformly from the 6 dimensional simplex(following this suggestion), i.e. from the set of points (a,b,c,d,e,f) such that a+b+c+d+e+f= 0 and 0<=a<=1, 0<=b<=1, 0<=c<=1, 0<=d<=1, 0<=e<=1 and 0<=f<=1.
Since geometrically the set of all points satifying (1) is a hexagon with vertices (-1,1,0), (-1,0,1), (0,-1,1), (1,-1,0), (1,0,-1) and (0,1,-1), I computed
(x,y,z) = a*(-1,1,0)+b*(-1,0,1)+c*(0,-1,1)+d*(1,-1,0)+e*(1,0,-1)+f*(0,1,-1).
I sampled half a million points following this method, but unfortunatly, it seems like the points are not uniformly distributed.
Does anybody know what the problem is with this and how to correct it?
Your hexagon consists of three parallelograms. So it is worth to choose randomly one of these parallelograms then uniformly generate point inside chosen one.
Base vectors for parallelograms:
v[0][0] = (-1,1,0)
v[0][1] = (0,-1,1)
v[1][0] = (0,-1,1)
v[1][1] = (1,0,-1)
v[2][0] = (1,0,-1)
v[2][1] = (-1,1,0)
Generation steps:
np = randominteger(0..2)
t = randomfloat(0..1)
u = randomfloat(0..1)
point = t * v[np][0] + u * v[np][1]
Related
I am working on problem related to camera calibration. In the below image, we consider a world coordinate system with X-axis going leftward, Y-axis rightward and Z-axis upward. We select 15 points(x,y,z) distributed uniformly across the 3 planes. The distance between grid lines is 1 inch. We also obtain MATLAB coordinates for the 15 pixels(u,v). The objective is to obtain the 3x4 camera matrix (M) using homogeneous linear least squares and then project the world points (x,y,z) to the image (u',v') using M. I have written code to do this but the coordinates I'm obtaining (u',v') seem to be very small in magnitude compared to the actual coordinates (u,v). The RMS error is too large and the projected points don't even map onto the image anywhere near the actual points. Is there any scaling that I need to do to convert it to MATLAB coordinates? I am also including my code which isn't very well written since I am relatively new to MATLAB.
P=[];% 2nx12 matrix - 30x12 matrix
for i=1:15 %compute P
world_row = world_coords(i,:); % 3d homogeneous coordinates (x,y,z,1)
zeroelem = repelem(0,4);
image_coord = image_coords(i,:);
img_u = image_coord(1);
prod = -img_u*world_row;
row1 = [world_row,zeroelem,prod];
zeroelem = repelem(0,3);
img_v = image_coord(2);
prod = -img_v*world_row;
row2 = [0,world_row,zeroelem,prod];
P=[P;row1;row2];
end
var1 = P'*P;
[V,D] = eig(var1');//compute eigen vector corresponding to least eigen value
m = V(:,1); //unit vector of norm 1
M = reshape(m,3,4); //camera matrix of 3x4 size
%get projected points
proj = M*world_coords';
U = proj (1,:);
V = proj (2,:);
W = proj (3,:);
for i=1:15
U(i) = U(i)/W(i);
V(i) = V(i)/W(i);
end
final = [U;V];//(u',v')
I am also including the image with the 15 points I have selected. Take P1(u,v) = (286,260) and P1(x,y,z) = (4,0,3). The (u',v') I obtained for this has low values. Can anyone point me what I'm doing wrong?
It was a silly error from my me that was giving me the wrong camera matrix. I noted down the world coordinates of the point P wrongly ((7,0,1) instead of (1,0,1)). This led to wrongly formed 30x12 matrix which we use to form an equation to be solved by homogeneous linear least squares. I have obtained the calibration matrix which projects the 3D points with a low RMS error after correcting this mistake.
I have an image of size as RGB uint8(576,720,3) where I want to classify each pixel to a set of colors. I have transformed using rgb2lab from RGB to LAB space, and then removed the L layer so it is now a double(576,720,2) consisting of AB.
Now, I want to classify this to some colors that I have trained on another image, and calculated their respective AB-representations as:
Cluster 1: -17.7903 -13.1170
Cluster 2: -30.1957 40.3520
Cluster 3: -4.4608 47.2543
Cluster 4: 46.3738 36.5225
Cluster 5: 43.3134 -17.6443
Cluster 6: -0.9003 1.4042
Cluster 7: 7.3884 11.5584
Now, in order to classify/label each pixel to a cluster 1-7, I currently do the following (pseudo-code):
clusters;
for each x
for each y
ab = im(x,y,2:3);
dist = norm(ab - clusters); // norm of dist between ab and each cluster
[~, idx] = min(dist);
end
end
However, this is terribly slow (52 seconds) because of the image resolution and that I manually loop through each x and y.
Are there some built-in functions I can use that performs the same job? There must be.
To summarize: I need a classification method that classifies pixel images to an already defined set of clusters.
Approach #1
For a N x 2 sized points/pixels array, you can avoid permute as suggested in the other solution by Luis, which could slow down things a bit, to have a kind of "permute-unrolled" version of it and also let's bsxfun work towards a 2D array instead of a 3D array, which must be better with performance.
Thus, assuming clusters to be ordered as a N x 2 sized array, you may try this other bsxfun based approach -
%// Get a's and b's
im_a = im(:,:,2);
im_b = im(:,:,3);
%// Get the minimum indices that correspond to the cluster IDs
[~,idx] = min(bsxfun(#minus,im_a(:),clusters(:,1).').^2 + ...
bsxfun(#minus,im_b(:),clusters(:,2).').^2,[],2);
idx = reshape(idx,size(im,1),[]);
Approach #2
You can try out another approach that leverages fast matrix multiplication in MATLAB and is based on this smart solution -
d = 2; %// dimension of the problem size
im23 = reshape(im(:,:,2:3),[],2);
numA = size(im23,1);
numB = size(clusters,1);
A_ext = zeros(numA,3*d);
B_ext = zeros(numB,3*d);
for id = 1:d
A_ext(:,3*id-2:3*id) = [ones(numA,1), -2*im23(:,id), im23(:,id).^2 ];
B_ext(:,3*id-2:3*id) = [clusters(:,id).^2 , clusters(:,id), ones(numB,1)];
end
[~, idx] = min(A_ext * B_ext',[],2); %//'
idx = reshape(idx, size(im,1),[]); %// Desired IDs
What’s going on with the matrix multiplication based distance matrix calculation?
Let us consider two matrices A and B between whom we want to calculate the distance matrix. For the sake of an easier explanation that follows next, let us consider A as 3 x 2 and B as 4 x 2 sized arrays, thus indicating that we are working with X-Y points. If we had A as N x 3 and B as M x 3 sized arrays, then those would be X-Y-Z points.
Now, if we have to manually calculate the first element of the square of distance matrix, it would look like this –
first_element = ( A(1,1) – B(1,1) )^2 + ( A(1,2) – B(1,2) )^2
which would be –
first_element = A(1,1)^2 + B(1,1)^2 -2*A(1,1)* B(1,1) + ...
A(1,2)^2 + B(1,2)^2 -2*A(1,2)* B(1,2) … Equation (1)
Now, according to our proposed matrix multiplication, if you check the output of A_ext and B_ext after the loop in the earlier code ends, they would look like the following –
So, if you perform matrix multiplication between A_ext and transpose of B_ext, the first element of the product would be the sum of elementwise multiplication between the first rows of A_ext and B_ext, i.e. sum of these –
The result would be identical to the result obtained from Equation (1) earlier. This would continue for all the elements of A against all the elements of B that are in the same column as in A. Thus, we would end up with the complete squared distance matrix. That’s all there is!!
Vectorized Variations
Vectorized variations of the matrix multiplication based distance matrix calculations are possible, though there weren't any big performance improvements seen with them. Two such variations are listed next.
Variation #1
[nA,dim] = size(A);
nB = size(B,1);
A_ext = ones(nA,dim*3);
A_ext(:,2:3:end) = -2*A;
A_ext(:,3:3:end) = A.^2;
B_ext = ones(nB,dim*3);
B_ext(:,1:3:end) = B.^2;
B_ext(:,2:3:end) = B;
distmat = A_ext * B_ext.';
Variation #2
[nA,dim] = size(A);
nB = size(B,1);
A_ext = [ones(nA*dim,1) -2*A(:) A(:).^2];
B_ext = [B(:).^2 B(:) ones(nB*dim,1)];
A_ext = reshape(permute(reshape(A_ext,nA,dim,[]),[1 3 2]),nA,[]);
B_ext = reshape(permute(reshape(B_ext,nB,dim,[]),[1 3 2]),nB,[]);
distmat = A_ext * B_ext.';
So, these could be considered as experimental versions too.
Use pdist2 (Statistics Toolbox) to compute the distances in a vectorized manner:
ab = im(:,:,2:3); % // get A, B components
ab = reshape(ab, [size(im,1)*size(im,2) 2]); % // reshape into 2-column
dist = pdist2(clusters, ab); % // compute distances
[~, idx] = min(dist); % // find minimizer for each pixel
idx = reshape(idx, size(im,1), size(im,2)); % // reshape result
If you don't have the Statistics Toolbox, you can replace the third line by
dist = squeeze(sum(bsxfun(#minus, clusters, permute(ab, [3 2 1])).^2, 2));
This gives squared distance instead of distance, but for the purposes of minimizing it doesn't matter.
I have two sets of 3D points (original and reconstructed) and correspondence information about pairs - which point from one set represents the second one. I need to find 3D translation and scaling factor which transforms reconstruct set so the sum of square distances would be least (rotation would be nice too, but points are rotated similarly, so this is not main priority and might be omitted in sake of simplicity and speed). And so my question is - is this solved and available somewhere on the Internet? Personally, I would use least square method, but I don't have much time (and although I'm somewhat good at math, I don't use it often, so it would be better for me to avoid it), so I would like to use other's solution if it exists. I prefer solution in C++, for example using OpenCV, but algorithm alone is good enough.
If there is no such solution, I will calculate it by myself, I don't want to bother you so much.
SOLUTION: (from your answers)
For me it's Kabsch alhorithm;
Base info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabsch_algorithm
General solution: http://nghiaho.com/?page_id=671
STILL NOT SOLVED:
I also need scale. Scale values from SVD are not understandable for me; when I need scale about 1-4 for all axises (estimated by me), SVD scale is about [2000, 200, 20], which is not helping at all.
Since you are already using Kabsch algorithm, just have a look at Umeyama's paper which extends it to get scale. All you need to do is to get the standard deviation of your points and calculate scale as:
(1/sigma^2)*trace(D*S)
where D is the diagonal matrix in SVD decomposition in the rotation estimation and S is either identity matrix or [1 1 -1] diagonal matrix, depending on the sign of determinant of UV (which Kabsch uses to correct reflections into proper rotations). So if you have [2000, 200, 20], multiply the last element by +-1 (depending on the sign of determinant of UV), sum them and divide by the standard deviation of your points to get scale.
You can recycle the following code, which is using the Eigen library:
typedef Eigen::Matrix<double, 3, 1, Eigen::DontAlign> Vector3d_U; // microsoft's 32-bit compiler can't put Eigen::Vector3d inside a std::vector. for other compilers or for 64-bit, feel free to replace this by Eigen::Vector3d
/**
* #brief rigidly aligns two sets of poses
*
* This calculates such a relative pose <tt>R, t</tt>, such that:
*
* #code
* _TyVector v_pose = R * r_vertices[i] + t;
* double f_error = (r_tar_vertices[i] - v_pose).squaredNorm();
* #endcode
*
* The sum of squared errors in <tt>f_error</tt> for each <tt>i</tt> is minimized.
*
* #param[in] r_vertices is a set of vertices to be aligned
* #param[in] r_tar_vertices is a set of vertices to align to
*
* #return Returns a relative pose that rigidly aligns the two given sets of poses.
*
* #note This requires the two sets of poses to have the corresponding vertices stored under the same index.
*/
static std::pair<Eigen::Matrix3d, Eigen::Vector3d> t_Align_Points(
const std::vector<Vector3d_U> &r_vertices, const std::vector<Vector3d_U> &r_tar_vertices)
{
_ASSERTE(r_tar_vertices.size() == r_vertices.size());
const size_t n = r_vertices.size();
Eigen::Vector3d v_center_tar3 = Eigen::Vector3d::Zero(), v_center3 = Eigen::Vector3d::Zero();
for(size_t i = 0; i < n; ++ i) {
v_center_tar3 += r_tar_vertices[i];
v_center3 += r_vertices[i];
}
v_center_tar3 /= double(n);
v_center3 /= double(n);
// calculate centers of positions, potentially extend to 3D
double f_sd2_tar = 0, f_sd2 = 0; // only one of those is really needed
Eigen::Matrix3d t_cov = Eigen::Matrix3d::Zero();
for(size_t i = 0; i < n; ++ i) {
Eigen::Vector3d v_vert_i_tar = r_tar_vertices[i] - v_center_tar3;
Eigen::Vector3d v_vert_i = r_vertices[i] - v_center3;
// get both vertices
f_sd2 += v_vert_i.squaredNorm();
f_sd2_tar += v_vert_i_tar.squaredNorm();
// accumulate squared standard deviation (only one of those is really needed)
t_cov.noalias() += v_vert_i * v_vert_i_tar.transpose();
// accumulate covariance
}
// calculate the covariance matrix
Eigen::JacobiSVD<Eigen::Matrix3d> svd(t_cov, Eigen::ComputeFullU | Eigen::ComputeFullV);
// calculate the SVD
Eigen::Matrix3d R = svd.matrixV() * svd.matrixU().transpose();
// compute the rotation
double f_det = R.determinant();
Eigen::Vector3d e(1, 1, (f_det < 0)? -1 : 1);
// calculate determinant of V*U^T to disambiguate rotation sign
if(f_det < 0)
R.noalias() = svd.matrixV() * e.asDiagonal() * svd.matrixU().transpose();
// recompute the rotation part if the determinant was negative
R = Eigen::Quaterniond(R).normalized().toRotationMatrix();
// renormalize the rotation (not needed but gives slightly more orthogonal transformations)
double f_scale = svd.singularValues().dot(e) / f_sd2_tar;
double f_inv_scale = svd.singularValues().dot(e) / f_sd2; // only one of those is needed
// calculate the scale
R *= f_inv_scale;
// apply scale
Eigen::Vector3d t = v_center_tar3 - (R * v_center3); // R needs to contain scale here, otherwise the translation is wrong
// want to align center with ground truth
return std::make_pair(R, t); // or put it in a single 4x4 matrix if you like
}
For 3D points the problem is known as the Absolute Orientation problem. A c++ implementation is available from Eigen http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/group__Geometry__Module.html#gab3f5a82a24490b936f8694cf8fef8e60 and paper http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs273/refs/umeyama.pdf
you can use it via opencv by converting the matrices to eigen with cv::cv2eigen() calls.
Start with translation of both sets of points. So that their centroid coincides with the origin of the coordinate system. Translation vector is just the difference between these centroids.
Now we have two sets of coordinates represented as matrices P and Q. One set of points may be obtained from other one by applying some linear operator (which performs both scaling and rotation). This operator is represented by 3x3 matrix X:
P * X = Q
To find proper scale/rotation we just need to solve this matrix equation, find X, then decompose it into several matrices, each representing some scaling or rotation.
A simple (but probably not numerically stable) way to solve it is to multiply both parts of the equation to the transposed matrix P (to get rid of non-square matrices), then multiply both parts of the equation to the inverted PT * P:
PT * P * X = PT * Q
X = (PT * P)-1 * PT * Q
Applying Singular value decomposition to matrix X gives two rotation matrices and a matrix with scale factors:
X = U * S * V
Here S is a diagonal matrix with scale factors (one scale for each coordinate), U and V are rotation matrices, one properly rotates the points so that they may be scaled along the coordinate axes, other one rotates them once more to align their orientation to second set of points.
Example (2D points are used for simplicity):
P = 1 2 Q = 7.5391 4.3455
2 3 12.9796 5.8897
-2 1 -4.5847 5.3159
-1 -6 -15.9340 -15.5511
After solving the equation:
X = 3.3417 -1.2573
2.0987 2.8014
After SVD decomposition:
U = -0.7317 -0.6816
-0.6816 0.7317
S = 4 0
0 3
V = -0.9689 -0.2474
-0.2474 0.9689
Here SVD has properly reconstructed all manipulations I performed on matrix P to get matrix Q: rotate by the angle 0.75, scale X axis by 4, scale Y axis by 3, rotate by the angle -0.25.
If sets of points are scaled uniformly (scale factor is equal by each axis), this procedure may be significantly simplified.
Just use Kabsch algorithm to get translation/rotation values. Then perform these translation and rotation (centroids should coincide with the origin of the coordinate system). Then for each pair of points (and for each coordinate) estimate Linear regression. Linear regression coefficient is exactly the scale factor.
A good explanation Finding optimal rotation and translation between corresponding 3D points
The code is in matlab but it's trivial to convert to opengl using the cv::SVD function
You might want to try ICP (Iterative closest point).
Given two sets of 3d points, it will tell you the transformation (rotation + translation) to go from the first set to the second one.
If you're interested in a c++ lightweight implementation, try libicp.
Good luck!
The general transformation, as well the scale can be retrieved via Procrustes Analysis. It works by superimposing the objects on top of each other and tries to estimate the transformation from that setting. It has been used in the context of ICP, many times. In fact, your preference, Kabash algorithm is a special case of this.
Moreover, Horn's alignment algorithm (based on quaternions) also finds a very good solution, while being quite efficient. A Matlab implementation is also available.
Scale can be inferred without SVD, if your points are uniformly scaled in all directions (I could not make sense of SVD-s scale matrix either). Here is how I solved the same problem:
Measure distances of each point to other points in the point cloud to get a 2d table of distances, where entry at (i,j) is norm(point_i-point_j). Do the same thing for the other point cloud, so you get two tables -- one for original and the other for reconstructed points.
Divide all values in one table by the corresponding values in the other table. Because the points correspond to each other, the distances do too. Ideally, the resulting table has all values being equal to each other, and this is the scale.
The median value of the divisions should be pretty close to the scale you are looking for. The mean value is also close, but I chose median just to exclude outliers.
Now you can use the scale value to scale all the reconstructed points and then proceed to estimating the rotation.
Tip: If there are too many points in the point clouds to find distances between all of them, then a smaller subset of distances will work, too, as long as it is the same subset for both point clouds. Ideally, just one distance pair would work if there is no measurement noise, e.g when one point cloud is directly derived from the other by just rotating it.
you can also use ScaleRatio ICP proposed by BaoweiLin
The code can be found in github
I'm working on a data mining algorithm where i want to pick a random direction from a particular point in the feature space.
If I pick a random number for each of the n dimensions from [-1,1] and then normalize the vector to a length of 1 will I get an even distribution across all possible directions?
I'm speaking only theoretically here since computer generated random numbers are not actually random.
One simple trick is to select each dimension from a gaussian distribution, then normalize:
from random import gauss
def make_rand_vector(dims):
vec = [gauss(0, 1) for i in range(dims)]
mag = sum(x**2 for x in vec) ** .5
return [x/mag for x in vec]
For example, if you want a 7-dimensional random vector, select 7 random values (from a Gaussian distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 1). Then, compute the magnitude of the resulting vector using the Pythagorean formula (square each value, add the squares, and take the square root of the result). Finally, divide each value by the magnitude to obtain a normalized random vector.
If your number of dimensions is large then this has the strong benefit of always working immediately, while generating random vectors until you find one which happens to have magnitude less than one will cause your computer to simply hang at more than a dozen dimensions or so, because the probability of any of them qualifying becomes vanishingly small.
You will not get a uniformly distributed ensemble of angles with the algorithm you described. The angles will be biased toward the corners of your n-dimensional hypercube.
This can be fixed by eliminating any points with distance greater than 1 from the origin. Then you're dealing with a spherical rather than a cubical (n-dimensional) volume, and your set of angles should then be uniformly distributed over the sample space.
Pseudocode:
Let n be the number of dimensions, K the desired number of vectors:
vec_count=0
while vec_count < K
generate n uniformly distributed values a[0..n-1] over [-1, 1]
r_squared = sum over i=0,n-1 of a[i]^2
if 0 < r_squared <= 1.0
b[i] = a[i]/sqrt(r_squared) ; normalize to length of 1
add vector b[0..n-1] to output list
vec_count = vec_count + 1
else
reject this sample
end while
There is a boost implementation of the algorithm that samples from normal distributions: random::uniform_on_sphere
I had the exact same question when also developing a ML algorithm.
I got to the same conclusion as Jim Lewis after drawing samples for the 2-d case and plotting the resulting distribution of the angle.
Furthermore, if you try to derive the density distribution for the direction in 2d when you draw at random from [-1,1] for the x- and y-axis ,you will see that:
f_X(x) = 1/(4*cos²(x)) if 0 < x < 45⁰
and
f_X(x) = 1/(4*sin²(x)) if x > 45⁰
where x is the angle, and f_X is the probability density distribution.
I have written about this here:
https://aerodatablog.wordpress.com/2018/01/14/random-hyperplanes/
#define SCL1 (M_SQRT2/2)
#define SCL2 (M_SQRT2*2)
// unitrand in [-1,1].
double u = SCL1 * unitrand();
double v = SCL1 * unitrand();
double w = SCL2 * sqrt(1.0 - u*u - v*v);
double x = w * u;
double y = w * v;
double z = 1.0 - 2.0 * (u*u + v*v);
I'm using procedural techniques to generate graphics for a game I am writing.
To generate some woods I would like to scatter trees randomly within a regular hexagonal area centred at <0,0>.
What is the best way to generate these points in a uniform way?
If you can find a good rectangular bounding box for your hexagon, the easiest way to generate uniformly random points is by rejection sampling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_sampling)
That is, find a rectangle that entirely contains your hexagon, and then generate uniformly random points within the rectangle (this is easy, just independently generate random values for each coordinate in the right range). Check if the random point falls within the hexagon. If yes, keep it. If no, draw another point.
So long as you can find a good bounding box (the area of the rectangle should not be more than a constant factor larger than the area of the hexagon it encloses), this will be extremely fast.
A possibly simple way is the following:
F ____ B
/\ /\
A /__\/__\ E
\ /\ /
\/__\/
D C
Consider the parallelograms ADCO (center is O) and AOBF.
Any point in this can be written as a linear combination of two vectors AO and AF.
An point P in those two parallelograms satisfies
P = x* AO + y * AF or xAO + yAD.
where 0 <= x < 1 and 0 <= y <= 1 (we discount the edges shared with BECO).
Similarly any point Q in the parallelogram BECO can be written as the linear combination of vectors BO and BE such that
Q = xBO + yBE where 0 <=x <=1 and 0 <=y <= 1.
Thus to select a random point
we select
A with probability 2/3 and B with probability 1/3.
If you selected A, select x in [0,1) (note, half-open interval [0,1)) and y in [-1,1] and choose point P = xAO+yAF if y > 0 else choose P = x*AO + |y|*AD.
If you selected B, select x in [0,1] and y in [0,1] and choose point Q = xBO + yBE.
So it will take three random number calls to select one point, which might be good enough, depending on your situation.
If it's a regular hexagon, the simplest method that comes to mind is to divide it into three rhombuses. That way (a) they have the same area, and (b) you can pick a random point in any one rhombus with two random variables from 0 to 1. Here is a Python code that works.
from math import sqrt
from random import randrange, random
from matplotlib import pyplot
vectors = [(-1.,0),(.5,sqrt(3.)/2.),(.5,-sqrt(3.)/2.)]
def randinunithex():
x = randrange(3);
(v1,v2) = (vectors[x], vectors[(x+1)%3])
(x,y) = (random(),random())
return (x*v1[0]+y*v2[0],x*v1[1]+y*v2[1])
for n in xrange(500):
v = randinunithex()
pyplot.plot([v[0]],[v[1]],'ro')
pyplot.show()
A couple of people in the discussion raised the question of uniformly sampling a discrete version of the hexagon. The most natural discretization is with a triangular lattice, and there is a version of the above solution that still works. You can trim the rhombuses a little bit so that they each contain the same number of points. They only miss the origin, which has to be allowed separately as a special case. Here is a code for that:
from math import sqrt
from random import randrange, random
from matplotlib import pyplot
size = 10
vectors = [(-1.,0),(.5,sqrt(3.)/2.),(.5,-sqrt(3.)/2.)]
def randinunithex():
if not randrange(3*size*size+1): return (0,0)
t = randrange(3);
(v1,v2) = (vectors[t], vectors[(t+1)%3])
(x,y) = (randrange(0,size),randrange(1,size))
return (x*v1[0]+y*v2[0],x*v1[1]+y*v2[1])
# Plot 500 random points in the hexagon
for n in xrange(500):
v = randinunithex()
pyplot.plot([v[0]],[v[1]],'ro')
# Show the trimmed rhombuses
for t in xrange(3):
(v1,v2) = (vectors[t], vectors[(t+1)%3])
corners = [(0,1),(0,size-1),(size-1,size-1),(size-1,1),(0,1)]
corners = [(x*v1[0]+y*v2[0],x*v1[1]+y*v2[1]) for (x,y) in corners]
pyplot.plot([x for (x,y) in corners],[y for (x,y) in corners],'b')
pyplot.show()
And here is a picture.
alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/0f80ad5d9a.png
The traditional approach (applicable to regions of any polygonal shape) is to perform trapezoidal decomposition of your original hexagon. Once that is done, you can select your random points through the following two-step process:
1) Select a random trapezoid from the decomposition. Each trapezoid is selected with probability proportional to its area.
2) Select a random point uniformly in the trapezoid chosen on step 1.
You can use triangulation instead of trapezoidal decomposition, if you prefer to do so.
Chop it up into six triangles (hence this applies to any regular polygon), randomly choose one triangle, and randomly choose a point in the selected triangle.
Choosing random points in a triangle is a well-documented problem.
And of course, this is quite fast and you'll only have to generate 3 random numbers per point --- no rejection, etc.
Update:
Since you will have to generate two random numbers, this is how you do it:
R = random(); //Generate a random number called R between 0-1
S = random(); //Generate a random number called S between 0-1
if(R + S >=1)
{
R = 1 – R;
S = 1 – S;
}
You may check my 2009 paper, where I derived an "exact" approach to generate "random points" inside different lattice shapes: "hexagonal", "rhombus", and "triangular". As far as I know it is the "most optimized approach" because for every 2D position you only need two random samples. Other works derived earlier require 3 samples for each 2D position!
Hope this answers the question!
http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0162
1) make biection from points to numbers (just enumerate them), get random number -> get point.
Another solution.
2) if N - length of hexagon's side, get 3 random numbers from [1..N], start from some corner and move 3 times with this numbers for 3 directions.
The rejection sampling solution above is intuitive and simple, but uses a rectangle, and (presumably) euclidean, X/Y coordinates. You could make this slightly more efficient (though still suboptimal) by using a circle with radius r, and generate random points using polar coordinates from the center instead, where distance would be rand()*r, and theta (in radians) would be rand()*2*PI.