Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.1 (Go to current version)
LanguageEnglish
  • C#
  • JS

Script language

Select your preferred scripting language. All code snippets will be displayed in this language.

Quaternion

struct in UnityEngine

Suggest a change

Success!

Thank you for helping us improve the quality of Unity Documentation. Although we cannot accept all submissions, we do read each suggested change from our users and will make updates where applicable.

Close

Submission failed

For some reason your suggested change could not be submitted. Please <a>try again</a> in a few minutes. And thank you for taking the time to help us improve the quality of Unity Documentation.

Close

Cancel

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.

Static Variables

identityThe identity rotation (Read Only).

Variables

eulerAnglesReturns the euler angle representation of the rotation.
this[int]Access the x, y, z, w components using [0], [1], [2], [3] respectively.
wW component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.
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 Functions

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 nicely formatted string of the Quaternion.

Static Functions

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 (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.
RotateTowardsRotates a rotation from towards to.
SlerpSpherically interpolates between a and b by 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?

Did you find this page useful? Please give it a rating: