set/get Pitch, Yaw, Roll

[KungFooMasta]

Currently I have a heirarchy of Nodes for my avatar's yaw, pitch, and roll.

My functional equivalent is calling

SceneNode::setOrientation( SceneNode::getInitialOrientation() );
SceneNode::yaw(...);

I'm not sure how efficient this is.. maybe a more experience Ogre can shed some light?

Also, since I already have a way to accomplish this, I don't need all of the *you can do a workaround by doing xyz..* comments. I just want to know if my current way is inefficient, is it's possible to implement a get/set yaw/pitch/roll, and how difficult it would be to implement this. Also, I'm not using quaternions.

Thanks for any information!

KungFooMasta

[sinbad]

Orientation ops like this are pretty efficient, and Ogre doesn't derive child updates until later anyway so making each change doesn't cascade. It really depends why you're doing it - the main opportunity for optimisation is not doing it so much, or at all, not in the implementation of it.

[KungFooMasta]

I use "setYaw" all the time for my character controller. The WASD keys are checked if pressed and used to determine the avatar's direction.

I don't have the code with me, but it follows like this:

Ogre::Degree angle = 0;
(checking if two move keys are pressed)
W + D -> -45 degrees
W + A -> 45 degress
S + D -> -135 degrees
S + A -> 135 degrees
(checking if only 1 key is pressed)
W -> 0 degrees
S -> 180 degrees
D -> -90 degrees
A -> 90 degrees

After computing the direction I yaw the avatar
mEntityNode->setYaw(angle + camAngle);

The behavior changes the avatars direction based on the keys pressed (and translates forward after facing the correct direction). Pressing W will set avatar facing north (relative to camera). Pressing S will spin the avatar 180 degrees facing south, etc.

In addition to character movement, my editor allows the user to set the yaw/pitch/roll of objects in the scene. Note that this does not happen as often as the avatar movement, which happens every frame a WASD key is pressed down.