Camera auto tracking and getting camera derived orientation

[alberts]

Hi all,

I’m trying to maintain the same camera orientation when switching from other camera modes to “Free” camera mode in CCS. The problem has to do with the camera modes that use auto tracking. When switching to “Free” mode from a camera mode that uses auto tracking I’m not able to retrieve the current camera orientation. As reported in this thread, I always get the IDENTITY quaternion as the derived orientation of the camera (Ogre::Camera). I have tried to disable auto tracking before and after trying to get the derived orientation but it does not work. I have also tried to manually update the parent node of the camera but the problem still persists. Is there any solution or work around?

Thanks in advance.

[Waruck]

Maybe your camera is connected to a scene-node and only stores its relative orientation to the scene node which is the identity? In that case try to get the derived orientation of the scene-node

[alberts]

Thanks Waruck for your help but that's not the problem. The derived orientation of the scene node has the same problem.

I've finally have decided to manually calculate the direction of the camera when switching from a camera mode using auto traking. It works with the "Free" camera mode because the exact orientation is not really needed (just the direction) but the issue is still there in Ogre. I can live with that .

[Waruck]

have you tried using Camera::getRealOrientation() ?
If that also don't work: I don't know much about the ccs but it's also possible to change the direction of the camera, to look in a different direction, without changing the orientation.

[alberts]

have you tried using Camera::getRealOrientation() ?

Yes. I also get the identity quaternion.

If that also don't work: I don't know much about the ccs but it's also possible to change the direction of the camera, to look in a different direction, without changing the orientation.

Please elaborate. How do you change the direction of a camera without changing its orientation?

[Waruck]

Ok, sry. This was a fault on my side. I thought Camera::setDirection() wouldn't rotate the camera but after looking at the source file I found myself wrong.

You could try Camera::getRealDirection(), but I doubt this would give you anything else than the global z-axis if the orientation is the identity quaternion.

The last thing that comes to my mind is that the scene's root node can be moved and rotated instead of the camera. You can try checking whether SceneManager::getRootSceneNode()->getOrientation() also gives you the identity quaternion.

If this doesn't help one has to look into the ccs code and look how the cameras are moved and rotated.