03/03/2020 Vector in game development: Understand the basics of vector math

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Vector In Game
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Development:
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Understand The
Basics Of Vector
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Math

ou know this moment would come, it’s time to speak about math. But
what you’re going to see here is the basic math used for the
development of video games, to be more specific, we’re going to
see how to use vector in game development and all the

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03/03/2020 Vector in game development: Understand the basics of vector math

operations around
this “math”
instrument.

In fact, without a certain

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 mathematical field and how
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math can be used to develop
 your games, it’s difficult to solve some problems in our games.
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I know that most of the game engine like Unity or Unreal

already has a physics or graphics engine that solve most of
the problems. But still, you need to know the mathematical
tools needed to interact with the game world.

In this first post, you’re going to see the basic entity that you’ll
probably find most in any games that you’re going to develop, the
Vector.

The vector in game development:

Vector is a quantity that has both magnitude and direction in an n-
dimensional space.

We can basically see it as an arrow: ———>.

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The arrow’s length is its magnitude and the tip of the arrow indicate
the direction of the vector itself.

Ok, but what can a vector be useful for?

Vectors can be used to describe all sorts of physics situations and
more. In fact, a ball that is kicked in a football game can be a situation
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with the direction where the force is applied. Same goes for a bullet
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direction applied to the bird can also be described using
vectors. And what about the velocity of a car running in the last
amazing racing game that we built? That also can be described using
vectors. And the list goes on.

How is a vector de ned in the game

engine?
In most game engines, you’ll find a vector as a description of its 3
components X, Y, Z.

Why 3 components? Because our game is defined in a 3D world so

when we apply a force to a game object in our engine, we can apply it
in each arbitrary direction inside the game (unless there are
restrictions).

For example if we want to describe an elevator that is moving up and

down in our Unity game, our vector we’ll be formed by these
coordinates (X = 0, Y = velocity of the elevator, Z = 0).

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03/03/2020 Vector in game development: Understand the basics of vector math

This is the definition of a vector in Unity C#:

Vector3 aVector = new Vector3(0,3,10)

Scalar vector
A scalar vector is nothing more than the magnitude representation of
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written in boldface ( e.g., v).
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Use vector to represent a point in space
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game, how can we do that? Taken the origin of our 3D world, we can
draw a vector from it to the game object and this is the vector that
describes the position of the game object inside the game world.

In fact, imagine drawing an “arrow” from the origin of the 3D world

to the position of the game object, that is the exact vector that we’re
looking for.

If you look at the image you’ll notice that the vector in question is
nothing more than the coordinate of X,Y,Z in a 3D cartesian system
which in our case represent the game world space.

So we understand that vectors can not only be used to describe

physical simulations, like the motion of a rigid body in a 3D world,

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03/03/2020 Vector in game development: Understand the basics of vector math

but they can also be helpful to describe the position of an object

inside the game world.

Orientation of vectors
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Left-hand system vs right-hand system
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In the right-hand system (RH), when curling your fingers around the
 z-axis with the thumb pointing toward the z positive direction, your
 fingers point from the x-axis toward the y-axis.
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It’s important to know which system your engine is using and stick to
that convention when using it.

Vector operations
Let’s take a look at some of the basic operations that we can do with
vectors and how they can be used inside your games.

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Multiplications by a scalar
Multiplication by a scalar has the effect to change the magnitude of
the vector. We simply multiply each component of the vector with
the scalar value.

For example, the vector A: (2x, 3y,5z) multiplied by 2 = A * 2 =

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Addition and subtraction
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Adding and subtracting vectors are quite easy Given two vectors A
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For example :

a + b = [(ax + bx), (ay + by), (az + bx)].

Image from citycollegiate

Same things goes with the subtraction.

a + b = [(ax – bx), (ay – by), (az – bx)].

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A good use of the addition and subtraction of vectors in games could

be in finding the distance between 2 game objects.

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In this case, the distance from A to B is defined as the sum of the 2

vectors (A + B).

Normal vector
A vector is said to be normal to a surface if it is perpendicular to that
surface.

Normalized vector
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It is a simple vector that has a magnitude of length equals to one unit

(don’t confuse it with the normal vector).

Dot.product

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The Dot Product can be helpful when finding the angle between 2
vectors and by consequence, if the 2 vectors are perpendicular to each
other. If the dot product is zero, then the 2 vectors are perpendicular.

Example of the results of some dot products

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Image from: cdn.tutsplus.com

It can also be done by:

A dot B = |A| * |B| * cos “angle between”

Another example usage of the dot product could be when calculating

the speed at which a character/game object is moving in the direction
of a slope. Other examples include finding how much of a character’s
velocity is in the direction of gravity, finding how long until a
movement crosses a threshold, and more.

Cross.product

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Example:

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With the cross product, we can find C, which is the axes where we can
rotate the tank in our game.

Magnitude of the cross product: |a x b| = |a| |b| sin (angle

between a and b).

The direction of the cross product: Use the right-hand rule to

determine the direction.

NB: Unity, can perform all of these operations without having to

calculate them manually. But it is just helpful to know how they work
and where to use them.

LINEAR INTERPOLATION (LERP)

The linear interpolation (LERP) is one of the most common
operations used in game development.

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For example, if we want to smoothly animate from point A to point B

over the course of two seconds at 30 frames per seconds, we would
need to find 60 intermediate positions between A and B.

A linear interpolation is a mathematical operation to find an

intermediate point between two known points. The operation can be
defined as follows:
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 position of the Lerp and 1 as the final position.
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As you can see from the definition, we’re representing the lerp as a
Vector.

Here is an example to visualize the lerp in action:

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Most game engines has a lerp function ready to be used. Here is an

example of a code using the lerp function in Unity:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
public class ExampleClass : MonoBehaviour {
public Vector3 startPosition;
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 public float speed = 1.0F;
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private float startTime;
 private float journeyLength;
 void Start() {
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startTime = Time.time;
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endPosition);
}
void Update() {
float distCovered = (Time.time - startTime) * speed;
float fracJourney = distCovered / journeyLength;
transform.position =
Vector3.Lerp(startPosition,endPosition, fracJourney);
}
}

As you can see, we’ve used vectors to describe the start position and
the end position of the lerp. The
Vector3.Lerp(https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3.Lerp.html)
is a function from Unity that executes the LERP operation for you.

Use vectors to describe objects

and interactions in the game
world.
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Model space
The model space is the reference system used by the object in
question.

For example, a character game object’s forward axis points in the

direction that the object is naturally facing.
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Up: is the direction that point towards the top of the object
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 The left or right are the axes that points to its left or right sides
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World coordinate
A word coordinate is a fixed coordinate in which position, orientation,
and scale of all the elements placed in the game are described.

The origin of the coordinate system is arbitrary, but it is as a common

practice to place it in the center of the world in order to reduce the
number of floating point numbers needed to describe objects very far
away from the origin.

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The orientation of the axes is also arbitrary but usually, the

convention is to have the the y-axis as the axis pointing upward.

View space
The view space coordinates are often called as the camera
coordinates. These are the coordinates fixed or attached to the game
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As you can see from the image, you can have a right or left hand
coordinate system attached to the camera.

Coordinate space hierarchy

A coordinate space hierarchy is a coordinate system that expresses its
position based on its parent object. For example, assuming you have a
character with an arm attached. The vector that expresses the
position of that arm is based on the coordinate system of its parent.

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As you can see from the example, the coordinates of the red box
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position.
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Raycasting
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Ray casting is a common technique used in games to find when a line

(ray) has hit a specific target. A common example is when a bullet is
shot from a gun.
As you can imagine, we’ll have to use Vectors to be able to correctly
use the Ray Casting function available in most game engines.

Let’s take this example from the Unity

Tutorials:

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Here we want to shoot a projectile and find if we have hit the target
(box). As you can see, the Raycast function takes two vectors as a
parameter. One is the vector “origin” which describes the origin
position of the shot in the game world. The other is the ray direction,
which describes where the projectile is headed.

The other parameters are not important for this lecture, but the first 2
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 direction of the shot
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 If you want to know more about ray casting,

 here(https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/physics/raycasting)
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is a nice tutorial.
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More in-depth reading

Vector
Math(http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/Basics/Introduction.html)
– Addition, subtraction, negation, normalization.
Better Explained Dot
Product(http://betterexplained.com/articles/vector-calculus-
understanding-the-dot-product/) – Follows similar style of
explaining dot product by examples
Dot Product(http://nic-gamedev.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-
vector-mathematics-dot-products.html) and Cross
Product(http://nic-gamedev.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-vector-
mathematics-cross-products.html) – More in-depth explanation
of dot and cross products

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03/03/2020 Vector in game development: Understand the basics of vector math

Save this article and come back to visit it every time you need to
remember something about the amazing world of vectors.

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