Finding World Space Coordinates of a Unity UI Element - user-interface

So according to the Unity documentation RectTransform.anchoredPosition will return the screen coordinates of a UI element if the anchors are touching at the pivot point of the RectTransform. However, if they are separated (in my case positioned at the corners of the rect) they will give you the position of the anchors relative to the pivot point. This is wonderful unless you want to keep appropriate dimensions of a UI object through multiple resolutions and position a different object based on that position at the same time.
Let's break this down. I have object1 and object2. object1 is positioned at (322.5, -600) and when the anchor points meet at the center (pivot) of the object anchoredPosition returns just that and object2 is positioned just fine. On the other hand once I have placed the anchors at the 4 corners of object1 anchoredPosition returns (45.6, -21). Thats just no good. I've even tried using Transform.position and then Camera.WorldToScreenPoint(), but that does just about as much to getting me to my goal.
I was hoping that you might be able to help me find a way to get the actual screen coordinates of this object. If anyone has any insight into this subject it would be greatly appreciated.
Notes: I've already attempted to use RectTranfrom.rect.center and it returned (0, 0)
I've also looked into RectTransformUtility and those helper functions have done all of squat.

anchoredPosition returns "The position of the pivot of this RectTransform relative to the anchor reference point." It has nothing to do with screen coordinates or world space.
If you're looking for the screen coordinates of a UI element in Unity, you can either use rectTransform.TransformPoint or rectTransform.GetWorldCorners to get any of the Vector3s you'd need in world space. Which ever you decide to go with, you can then pass them into Camera.WorldToScreenPoint()

Here's a glimpse on how finding world space coordinates of UI elements works if your stuck and need to roll your own transformations from view-space to world-space.
This may be beneficial if say you need something more than rectTransform.TransformPoint or want to know how this works.
Ok, so you want to do a transformation from normalised UI coordinates in the range [-1, 1], and de-project them back into world space coordinates.
To do this you could use something like Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint or Camera.main.ViewportToWorldPoint, or even rectTransform.position if your a lacker.
This is how to do it with just the camera's projection matrix.
/// <summary>
/// Get the world position of an anchor/normalised device coordinate in the range [-1, 1]
/// </summary>
private Vector3 GetAnchor(Vector2 ndcSpace)
{
Vector3 worldPosition;
Vector4 viewSpace = new Vector4(ndcSpace.x, ndcSpace.y, 1.0f, 1.0f);
// Transform to projection coordinate.
Vector4 projectionToWorld = (_mainCamera.projectionMatrix.inverse * viewSpace);
// Perspective divide.
projectionToWorld /= projectionToWorld.w;
// Z-component is backwards in Unity.
projectionToWorld.z = -projectionToWorld.z;
// Transform from camera space to world space.
worldPosition = _mainCamera.transform.position + _mainCamera.transform.TransformVector(projectionToWorld);
return worldPosition;
}

I've found out that you can multiply your coordinate by the 2 times the camera size and divide it to screen height.
I have a panel placed at (0, 1080) on a fullHD screen (1920 x 1080), camera size is 7. So the Y coordinate in world space will be 1080 * 7 * 2 / 1080 = 14 -> (0, 14).

ScreenToWorldPoint convert canvas position to world position :
Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(transform.position)

Related

How to plot country names on the globe, so the mesh will be aligned with the surfaces

I'm trying to plot country names of the globe, so the text meshes will be aligned with the surface, but I'm failing to calculate proper rotations. For text I'm using THREE.TextGeometry. The name appears on the click of the mesh of the country at the point of intersection using raycasting. I'm lacking knowledge of how to turn these coordinates to proper rotation angles. I'm not posting my code, as it's complete mess and I believe for a knowldgeable person will be easier to explain how to achieve this in general.
Here is desired result:
The other solution, which I tried (and which, of course, is not the ultimate), based on this SO answer. The idea is to use the normal of the face you intersect with the raycaster.
Obtain the point of intersection.
Obtain the face of intersection.
Obtain the normal of the face (2).
Get the normal (3) in world coordinates.
Set position of the text object as sum of point of intersection (1) and the normal in world coordinates (4).
Set lookAt() vector of the text object as sum of its position (5) and the normal in world coordinates (4).
Seems long, but actually it makes not so much of code:
var PGHelper = new THREE.PolarGridHelper(...); // let's imagine it's your text object ;)
var PGlookAt = new THREE.Vector3(); // point of lookAt for the "text" object
var normalMatrix = new THREE.Matrix3();
var worldNormal = new THREE.Vector3();
and in the animation loop:
for ( var i = 0; i < intersects.length; i++ ) {
normalMatrix.getNormalMatrix( intersects[i].object.matrixWorld );
worldNormal.copy(intersects[i].face.normal).applyMatrix3( normalMatrix ).normalize();
PGHelper.position.addVectors(intersects[i].point, worldNormal);
PGlookAt.addVectors(PGHelper.position, worldNormal);
PGHelper.lookAt(PGlookAt);
}
jsfiddle exmaple
The method works with meshes of any geometry (checked with spheres and boxes though ;) ). And I'm sure there are another better methods.
very interesting question.I have tried this way, we can regard the text as a plane. lets define a normal vector n from your sphere center(or position) to point on the sphere surface where you want to display text. I have a simple way to make normal vector right.
1. put the text mesh on sphere center. text.position.copy(sphere.position)
2. make text to the point on sphere surface, text.lookAt(point)
3.relocate text to the point. text.position.copy(point)

Rotating rectangles so they maintain their relative position to the canvas

I have a background pixmap, basically a canvas, which I draw a bunch of
rectangles on and I need to rotate the pixmap and rectangles.
However rotating the background pixmap and the rectangles needs to be done
seperately, that is the rotation of the background pixmap gets handled via an
external library routine and I need to rotate and redraw the rectangles
on top manually.
So far I am actually able to rotate the rectangles by applying a
transformation matrix I got from Wikipedia
to each vertex. What I don't know is how to translate them that each rectangle retains its position relative to the canvas.
Here is a quick drawing for illustration of what I want to achieve:
I need to do this with C and Xlib, but I'm not necessarily looking for code but would appreciate some general hints/algorithms.
To get the translated position for the child object, you need to rotate the relative position vector for the child object, and then add it to the origin:
Pseudocode would be:
public static Vector2 OffsetByRotation(Vector2 childPos, Vector2 parentPos, float angle)
{
var relativeVector = childPos - parentPos;
relativeVector = Rotate(relativeVector, angle);
return parentPos + relativeVector;
}
Note that your example image not only rotates the parent object, but also translates it: your left image is rotated around (0, 300), but this point is then translated to (0, 0).
The requested transformation is
X' = 300 - Y
Y' = X

Setting the projectionMatrix of a Perspective Camera in Three.js

I'm trying to set the ProjectionMatrix of a Three.js Perspective Camera to match a projection Matrix I calculated with a different program.
So I set the camera's position and rotation like this:
self.camera.position.x = 0;
self.camera.position.y = 0;
self.camera.position.z = 142 ;
self.camera.rotation.x = 0.0;// -0.032
self.camera.rotation.y = 0.0;
self.camera.rotation.z = 0;
Next I created a 4x4 Matrix (called Matrix4 in Three.js) like this:
var projectionMatrix = new THREE.Matrix4(-1426.149, -145.7176, -523.0170, 225.07519, -42.40711, -1463.2367, -23.6839, 524.3322, -0.0174, -0.11928, -0.99270, 0.43826, 0, 0, 0, 1);
and changed the camera's projection Matrix entries like this:
for ( var i = 0; i < 16; i++) {
self.camera.projectionMatrix.elements[i] = projectionMatrix.elements[i];
}
when I now render the scene I just get a black screen and can't see any of the objects I inserted. Turning the angle of the Camera doesn't help either. I still can't see any objects.
If I insert a
self.camera.updateProjectionMatrix();
after setting the camera's projection Matrix to the values of my projectionMatrix the camera is set back to the original Position (x=0,y=0,z=142 and looking at the origin where I created some objects) and the values I set in the camera's matrix seem to have been overwritten. I checked that by printing the cameras projection Matrix to the console. If I do not call the updateProjectionMatrix() function the values stay as I set them.
Does somebody have an idea how to solve this problem?
If I do not call the updateProjectionMatrix() function the values stay as I set them.
Correct, updateProjectionMatrix() calculates those 16 numbers you pasted in your projection matrix based on a bunch of parameters. Those parameters are, the position and rotation you set above, plus the parameters you passed (or default) for the camera. (these actually make the matrixWorld and its inverse.
In case of a perspective camera, you don't have much - near, far, fov and aspect. Left,right,top,bottom are derived from these, with an orthographic camera you set them directly. These are then used to compose the projection matrix.
Scratch a pixel has a REALLY good tutorial on this subject. The next lesson on the openGL projection matrix is actually more relevant to WebGL. left right top and bottom are made from your FOV and your aspect ratio. Add near and far and you've got yourself a projection matrix.
Now, in order for this thing to work, you either have to know what you're doing, or get really lucky. Pasting these numbers from somewhere else and getting it to work is short of winning the lottery. Best case scenario, you can have your scale all wrong and clipping your scene. Worst case, you've mixed a completely different matrix, different XYZ convention, and there's no way you'll get it to work, or at least make sense.
Out of curiosity, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to match your camera to a camera from somewhere else?

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).

Correct calculations of floats in OpenGL ES

I'm making a game in 3D. Everything is correct in my code, although I'm confused about one thing.
When I setting up my perspective (gluPerspective) I set it to zNear = 0.1f and zFar = 100.0f. So far so good. Now, I also wanna move things just in the x or y direction via glTranslate.... But, the origo starts in the absolute centrum of my screen. Like I have zFar and zNear, why isn't that properly to the x and y coordinates? Now it is like if I move my sprite -2.0f to left on x-axis and make glTranslate... to handle that, it almost out of screen. And the z-axis is not behave like that. That's make it a lot more difficult to handle calculations in all directions. It's quite hard to add an unique float value to an object and for now I just add these randomly to just make them stay inside screen.
So, I have problem calculate corrects value to each object. Have I missed something? Should I change or thinkig of something? The reason that this is important is because I need to know the absolute left and right of my screen to make these calculations.
This is my onSurfaceChanged:
public void onSurfaceChanged(GL10 gl, int width, int height) {
gl.glViewport(0, 0, width, height);
gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_PROJECTION);
gl.glLoadIdentity();
GLU.gluPerspective(gl, 45.0f, (float)width / (float)height,
0.1f, 100.0f);
gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_MODELVIEW);
gl.glLoadIdentity();
}
Thanks in advance!
When you use gluPerspective you are transforming your coordinates from 3D world space into 2D screen space, using a matrix which looks at (0,0,0) by default (i.e. x= 0, y = 0 is in the center of the screen). When you set your object coordinates you are doing it in world space, NOT screen space.
If you want to effectively do 2D graphics (where things are given coordinates respective to their position on the screen you want to use gluOrtho2D instead.

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