Version: 2020.1
LanguageEnglish
  • C#

Quaternion

struct in UnityEngine

/

Implemented in:UnityEngine.CoreModule

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Description

Quaternions are used to represent rotations.

They are compact, don't suffer from gimbal lock and can easily be interpolated. Unity internally uses Quaternions to represent all rotations.

They are based on complex numbers and are not easy to understand intuitively. You almost never access or modify individual Quaternion components (x,y,z,w); most often you would just take existing rotations (e.g. from the Transform) and use them to construct new rotations (e.g. to smoothly interpolate between two rotations). The Quaternion functions that you use 99% of the time are: Quaternion.LookRotation, Quaternion.Angle, Quaternion.Euler, Quaternion.Slerp, Quaternion.FromToRotation, and Quaternion.identity. (The other functions are only for exotic uses.)

You can use the Quaternion.operator * to rotate one rotation by another, or to rotate a vector by a rotation.

Note that Unity expects Quaternions to be normalized.

Static Properties

identityThe identity rotation (Read Only).

Properties

eulerAnglesReturns or sets the euler angle representation of the rotation.
normalizedReturns this quaternion with a magnitude of 1 (Read Only).
this[int]Access the x, y, z, w components using [0], [1], [2], [3] respectively.
wW component of the Quaternion. Do not directly modify quaternions.
xX component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.
yY component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.
zZ component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.

Constructors

QuaternionConstructs new Quaternion with given x,y,z,w components.

Public Methods

SetSet x, y, z and w components of an existing Quaternion.
SetFromToRotationCreates a rotation which rotates from fromDirection to toDirection.
SetLookRotationCreates a rotation with the specified forward and upwards directions.
ToAngleAxisConverts a rotation to angle-axis representation (angles in degrees).
ToStringReturns a formatted string of the Quaternion.

Static Methods

AngleReturns the angle in degrees between two rotations a and b.
AngleAxisCreates a rotation which rotates angle degrees around axis.
DotThe dot product between two rotations.
EulerReturns a rotation that rotates z degrees around the z axis, x degrees around the x axis, and y degrees around the y axis; applied in that order.
FromToRotationCreates a rotation which rotates from fromDirection to toDirection.
InverseReturns the Inverse of rotation.
LerpInterpolates between a and b by t and normalizes the result afterwards. The parameter t is clamped to the range [0, 1].
LerpUnclampedInterpolates between a and b by t and normalizes the result afterwards. The parameter t is not clamped.
LookRotationCreates a rotation with the specified forward and upwards directions.
NormalizeConverts this quaternion to one with the same orientation but with a magnitude of 1.
RotateTowardsRotates a rotation from towards to.
SlerpSpherically interpolates between quaternions a and b by ratio t. The parameter t is clamped to the range [0, 1].
SlerpUnclampedSpherically interpolates between a and b by t. The parameter t is not clamped.

Operators

operator *Combines rotations lhs and rhs.
operator ==Are two quaternions equal to each other?

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