Summary
Along with the data structures required for storing and drawing a mesh, affine transformations are a fundamental part of computer graphics. In fact, how OpenGL stores and manipulates them is the crux of all graphics processing.
In this chapter, we’ve examined the five transformations that fit into this special category—translation, scaling, rotation, shearing, and reflection. Of all these, rotation is the most complex. The mathematics of rotations has been a hotly researched topic in computer graphics since its inception, as you too will experience as we progress through the book.
We began by reviewing translation, a functionality we have been using since the creation of the Transform
class in our Python project. It, along with scaling, is a very simple mathematical function. We spent a lot of time adding the final touches to the Transform
class, completing it with methods to control scaling and rotation.
These newfound skills will assist you in expanding...