3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition

3

Multiple Coordinate Spaces

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;surely I have a delightful inheritance.

— Psalm 16:6 (New International Version)

Chapter 1 discussed how we can establish a coordinate space anywhere we want simply by picking a point to be the origin and deciding how we want the axes to be oriented. We usually don’t make these decisions arbitrarily; we form coordinate spaces for specific reasons (one might say “different spaces for different cases”). This chapter gives some examples of common coordinate spaces that are used for graphics and games. We will then discuss how coordinate spaces are nested within other coordinate spaces.

This chapter introduces the idea of multiple coordinate systems. It is divided ...