Scripting API: Quaternion - Unity - Manual

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Quaternion

struct in UnityEngine

/

Implemented in:UnityEngine.CoreModule

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Description

Quaternions are used to represent rotations.

A quaternion is a four-tuple of real numbers {x,y,z,w}. A quaternion is a mathematically convenient alternative to the euler angle representation. You can interpolate a quaternion without experiencing gimbal lock. You can also use a quaternion to concatenate a series of rotations into a single representation.Unity internally uses Quaternions to represent all rotations.In most cases, you can use existing rotations from methods such as Transform.localRotation or Transform.rotation to construct new rotations. For example, use existing rotations to smoothly interpolate between two rotations. The most used Quaternion functions are as follows: Quaternion.LookRotation, Quaternion.Angle, Quaternion.Euler, Quaternion.Slerp, Quaternion.FromToRotation, and Quaternion.identity.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

Property	Description
identity	The identity rotation (Read Only).

Properties

Property	Description
eulerAngles	Returns or sets the euler angle representation of the rotation in degrees.
normalized	Returns this quaternion with a magnitude of 1 (Read Only).
this[int]	Access the x, y, z, w components using [0], [1], [2], [3] respectively.
w	W component of the Quaternion. Do not directly modify quaternions.
x	X component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.
y	Y component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.
z	Z component of the Quaternion. Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.

Constructors

Constructor	Description
Quaternion	Constructs new Quaternion with given x,y,z,w components.

Public Methods

Method	Description
Equals	Performs exact binary comparison of each Quaternion component (x, y, z, w).
Set	Set x, y, z and w components of an existing Quaternion.
SetFromToRotation	Creates a rotation which rotates from fromDirection to toDirection.
SetLookRotation	Creates a rotation with the specified forward and upwards directions.
ToAngleAxis	Converts a rotation to angle-axis representation.
ToString	Returns a formatted string for this quaternion.

Static Methods

Method	Description
Angle	Returns the angle in degrees between two rotations a and b. The resulting angle ranges from 0 to 180.
AngleAxis	Creates a rotation which rotates angle degrees around axis.
Dot	The dot product between two rotations.
Euler	Converts an input Euler angle rotation specified as three floats to a Quaternion.
FromToRotation	Creates a rotation from fromDirection to toDirection.
Inverse	Returns the Inverse of rotation.
Lerp	Interpolates between a and b by t and normalizes the result afterwards.
LerpUnclamped	Interpolates between a and b by t and normalizes the result afterwards. The parameter t is not clamped.
LookRotation	Creates a rotation with the specified forward and upwards directions.
Normalize	Converts this quaternion to a quaternion with the same orientation but with a magnitude of 1.0.
RotateTowards	Rotates a rotation from towards to.
Slerp	Spherically linear interpolates between unit quaternions a and b by a ratio of t.
SlerpUnclamped	Spherically linear interpolates between unit quaternions a and b by t.

Operators

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

Is something described here not working as you expect it to? It might be a Known Issue. Please check with the Issue Tracker at issuetracker.unity3d.com.

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