5

Transformations

This chapter presents commands to locate (position, orient and scale) entities such as models, lights and cameras in space which help create useful scenes for rendering.

5.1 Coordinate Systems

A coordinate system, also known as a reference frame or coordinate space or simply space, is a central concept in computer graphics. Conceptually it provides a measurement system consisting of an origin, some reference directions (X, Y and Z axes in three-dimensional space) and uniformly-spaced tick marks along these directions with respect to which elements can be constructed. Elements created with reference to a certain coordinate system coexist in the space laid out by that system. Points in this space can be assigned values (e.g. x,y,z ...

Get Rendering for Beginners now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.