1985/07/01 by Ken Shoemake · 9 citations
Engineering · Computer Science · #Advanced Numerical Analysis Techniques #Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques #3D Shape Modeling and Analysis
paper · doi:10.1145/325165.325242
openalex publication_date 1985/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Solid bodies roll and tumble through space. In computer animation, so do cameras. The rotations of these objects are best described using a four coordinate system, quaternions, as is shown in this paper. Of all quaternions, those on the unit sphere are most suitable for animation, but the question of how to construct curves on spheres has not been much explored. This paper gives one answer by presenting a new kind of spline curve, created on a sphere, suitable for smoothly in-betweening (i.e. interpolating) sequences of arbitrary rotations. Both theory and experiment show that the motion generated is smooth and natural, without quirks found in earlier methods.