iOS: Questions about camera information within GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt result

Question

The iOS 5 documentation reveals that GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt operates the same as gluLookAt.

The definition is provided here:

static __inline__ GLKMatrix4 GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt(float eyeX, float eyeY, float eyeZ,
                                                  float centerX, float centerY, float centerZ,
                                                  float upX, float upY, float upZ)
{
    GLKVector3 ev = { eyeX, eyeY, eyeZ };
    GLKVector3 cv = { centerX, centerY, centerZ };
    GLKVector3 uv = { upX, upY, upZ };
    GLKVector3 n = GLKVector3Normalize(GLKVector3Add(ev, GLKVector3Negate(cv)));
    GLKVector3 u = GLKVector3Normalize(GLKVector3CrossProduct(uv, n));
    GLKVector3 v = GLKVector3CrossProduct(n, u);

    GLKMatrix4 m = { u.v[0], v.v[0], n.v[0], 0.0f,
                     u.v[1], v.v[1], n.v[1], 0.0f,
                     u.v[2], v.v[2], n.v[2], 0.0f,
                     GLKVector3DotProduct(GLKVector3Negate(u), ev),
                     GLKVector3DotProduct(GLKVector3Negate(v), ev),
                     GLKVector3DotProduct(GLKVector3Negate(n), ev),
                     1.0f };

    return m;
}

I'm trying to extract camera information from this:

1. Read the camera position
    GLKVector3 cPos = GLKVector3Make(mx.m30, mx.m31, mx.m32);
2. Read the camera right vector as `u` in the above
    GLKVector3 cRight = GLKVector3Make(mx.m00, mx.m10, mx.m20);
3. Read the camera up vector as `u` in the above
    GLKVector3 cUp = GLKVector3Make(mx.m01, mx.m11, mx.m21);
4. Read the camera look-at vector as `n` in the above
    GLKVector3 cLookAt = GLKVector3Make(mx.m02, mx.m12, mx.m22);

There are two questions:

---

1. The look-at vector seems negated as they defined it, since they perform (eye - center) rather than (center - eye). Indeed, when I call GLKMatrix4MakeLookAt with a camera position of (0,0,-10) and a center of (0,0,1) my extracted look at is (0,0,-1), i.e. the negative of what I expect. So should I negate what I extract?

2. The camera position I extract is the result of the view transformation matrix premultiplying the view rotation matrix, hence the dot products in their definition. I believe this is incorrect - can anyone suggest how else I should calculate the position?

---

Many thanks for your time.

Answer 1

Per its documentation, gluLookAt calculates centre - eye, uses that for some intermediate steps, then negatives it for placement into the resulting matrix. So if you want centre - eye back, the taking negative is explicitly correct.

You'll also notice that the result returned is equivalent to a multMatrix with the rotational part of the result followed by a glTranslate by -eye. Since the classic OpenGL matrix operations post multiply, that means gluLookAt is defined to post multiply the rotational by the translational. So Apple's implementation is correct, and the same as first moving the camera, then rotating it — which is correct.

So if you define R = (the matrix defining the rotational part of your instruction), T = (the translational analogue), you get R.T. If you want to extract T you could premultiply by the inverse of R and then pull the results out of the final column, since matrix multiplication is associative.

As a bonus, because R is orthonormal, the inverse is just the transpose.