3.3 Composition of Transformations

3.3 Composition of Transformations

Suppose S is a scaling matrix, R is a rotation matrix, and T is a translation matrix. Assume we have a cube made up of eight vertices, v_i, for i = 0,1,…,7, and we wish to apply these three transformations to each vertex successively. The obvious way to do this is step-by-step:

 

However, because matrix multiplication is associative, we can instead write this equivalently as:

 

We can think of the matrix C = SRT as a matrix that encapsulates all three transformations into one net affine transformation matrix. In other words, matrix-matrix multiplication allows us to concatenate transforms.

This has performance implications. To see this, assume that a 3D object is composed of 20,000 points and that we want to apply these three successive geometric transformations to the object. Using the step-by-step approach, we would require 20,000×3 vector-matrix multiplications. On the other hand, using the combined matrix approach requires 20,000 vector-matrix multiplications and two matrix-matrix multiplications. Clearly, two extra matrix-matrix multiplications is a cheap price to pay for the large savings in vector-matrix multiplications.

Note

Again, we point out that matrix multiplication is not commutative. This is even seen geometrically. For example, a rotation followed by a translation, which we can describe by the matrix product RT, does not result in the same transformation as the same translation followed by the same rotation, that is, TR. Figure 3.7 demonstrates this. Figure 3.7: (a) Rotating first and then translating. (b) Translating first and then rotating.

转载于:https://www.cnblogs.com/seanyou/archive/2010/09/20/1831431.html