Mike Horvath <mik### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Is it possible to extract the Euler rotation amounts from a unit vector?
> Is there a command that does this? Thanks.
>

Methinks you're working on a way to re-structure a transform{matrix...} back
into rotation angles ;-)

[possibly off-topic]
Reading the Wikipedia entry about 'Euler angles' (probably for the first time!),
particularly the 'simplified' form, it reminded me of some test animations I did
years ago, of an object rotating in free space. Like, a chunk of rock slowly
rotating way out in the cosmos.

At first, I thought the object needed THREE separate rotations to look right.
That seemed logical-- if only from the standpoint of an airplane's 'yaw, pitch
and roll.' But the result looked odd-- like there was an extra invisible force
acting on it (and/or that the object was ending up in the same orientation it
started in, very quickly.) Just from experimenting, I found that restricting the
rotations to TWO axes *looked* to be much more natural, and that the third-axis
rotation was... redundant-- which seems to agree with the notion of 'simplified'
Euler angles, where the needed rotations can actually be around two axes rather
than three, to get any orientation (if I'm reading the definition properly, that
is!)

Not that this is of any help to you :-(

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