You can construct a quaternion from a 3×3 rotation matrix, a 4×4 rotation matrix, a rotation about an axis, Euler angles, or an (x, y, z, w) tuple. Note that rotations are represented as unit quaternions (i.e. quaternions of length 1), so constructing a quaternion from an arbitrary (x, y, z, w) tuple will not necessarily give a unit quaternion.

# Construct a quaternion from a rotation matrix.
hou.Quaternion(matrix3)
hou.Quaternion(matrix4)

# Construct a quaternion from a rotation about an arbitrary axis.
hou.Quaternion(90, (1, 1, 0))

# Construct a quaternion from Euler angles.
quaternion = hou.Quaternion()
quaternion.setToEulerRotates((rx, ry, rz), rotate_order="xyz")

# Another way to construct a quaternion from Euler angles by first
# constructing a matrix.
hou.Quaternion(hou.hmath.buildRotate((rx, ry, rz), "xyz"))

# Construct a quaternion with specific x, y, z, and w values.
hou.Quaternion(x, y, z, w)

# Construct a quaternion with x, y, z, set to zero and w set to one.
# This quaternion corresponds to the identity quaternion (i.e. no
# rotation).
hou.Quaternion()

See also hou.hmath.buildRotate, hou.hmath.buildRotateAboutAxis, and hou.Matrix4.extractRotationMatrix3.

Return a 3×3 rotation matrix corresponding to the rotation in the quaternion.

To create a hou.Matrix4 instead of a hou.Matrix3, you can easily create a Matrix4 from the Matrix3:

hou.Matrix4(quaternion.extractRotationMatrix3())

If the quaternion is the zero quaternion, this method does not raise an exception. Instead, it returns the identity matrix.

See also hou.Quaternion.setToRotationMatrix.

Return an axis and a rotation about that axis corresponding to the rotation in the quaternion. The return value is a 2-tuple containing a float and a hou.Vector3. The returned axis vector is normalized.

If this quaternion is the zero quaternion, the angle returned is zero and the vector is the zero vector. Otherwise, if it is not normalized, the return values will correspond to the rotation represented by the normalized quaternion.

See also hou.Quaternion.setToAngleAxis.

Return the Euler rotations (the x, y, and z rotation values, in degrees, about the coordinate axes) corresponding to the rotation in the quaternion.

This method can also be implemented as follows:

def extractEulerRotates(self, rotate_order="xyz"):
    return hou.Matrix4(self.extractRotationMatrix3()).explode(rotate_order=rotate_order)["rotate"]

See also hou.Quaternion.setToEulerRotates.

Rotates the given hou.Vector3 by this quaternion and returns the result.

Perform spherical linear interpolation between this quaternion and another, returning a new quaternion. fraction is a float from 0.0 to 1.0, where 0.0 gives this quaternion and 1.0 gives the other quaternion. This method is very useful to smoothly interpolate between two different rotations.

See Wikipedia’s Slerp page for more information.

The following example will nicely interpolate between two sets of Euler rotations.

def interpolateEulerRotations(rotation1, rotation2, fraction, rotate_order="xyz"):
    quaternion1 = hou.Quaternion()
    quaternion1.setToEulerRotates(rotation1, rotate_order)
    quaternion2 = hou.Quaternion()
    quaternion2.setToEulerRotates(rotation2, rotate_order)

    return quaternion1.slerp(quaternion2, fraction).extractEulerRotates(rotate_order)

Set this quaternion to contain the rotation component of the transformation in a hou.Matrix3 or hou.Matrix4.

See also hou.Quaternion.extractRotationMatrix3.

Set this quaternion to contain the rotation about an axis by the given angle. angle_in_deg is in degrees and axis is a sequence of 3 floats.

This method can also be implemented as follows:

def setToAngleAxis(self, angle_in_deg, axis):
    self.setToRotationMatrix(
        hou.hmath.buildRotateAboutAxis(axis, angle_in_deg))

See also hou.Quaternion.extractAngleAxis.

Sets this quaternion to the quaternion which rotates the hou.Vector3 a onto the vector b.

Set this quaternion to contain the rotation specified by Euler rotations about the x, y, and z coordinate axes.

This method can also be implemented as follows:

def setToEulerRotates(self, angles_in_deg, rotate_order="xyz"):
    self.setToRotationMatrix(
        hou.hmath.buildRotate(angles_in_deg, rotate_order))

See also hou.Quaternion.extractEulerRotates and hou.hmath.buildRotate.

Set the quaternion’s 4 float values (x, y, z, and w). tuple must be a sequence of 4 floats.

This method will modify an existing quaternion object. Use hou.Quaternion.__init__ to construct a new quaternion from these four values.

See also hou.Quaternion.__setitem__.

Returns whether this quaternion is equal to another, within a numerical tolerance.

Return a quaternion containing the opposite rotation of that stored in this quaternion. Intuitively, for unit length quaternions, the quaternion returned contains a rotation by the same angle about an axis pointing in the opposite direction.

Return a quaternion containing the multiplicative inverse of this quaternion. For unit quaternions, the inverse is the same as the conjugate.

See also hou.Quaternion.conjugate.

Return a normalized version of this quaternion (i.e. a version of this quaternion whose length is one). Quaternions that represent rotations are always normalized.

Normalizing a quaternion whose length is zero or near zero will return a new quaternion with the same values.

This method can be implemented as follows (for non-zero length quaternions):

def normalized(self):
    return self * (1.0 / self.length())

Return the length of the quaternion. When quaternions represent rotations, their length is one.

A quaternion’s length is compute the same as a Vector4's: hou.Vector4(self).length()

Return the dot product of this quaternion with another one.

Return one of the four float values stored in the quaternion. This method, along with hou.Quaternion.__setitem__ and hou.Quaternion.__len__, make quaternions behave like sequences of 4 floats so you can use Python’s square bracket notation, sequence iteration, etc.

>>> q = hou.Quaternion(1, 2, 3, 4)
>>> for value in q:
...     print value
1
2
3
4
>>> q[2]
3
>>> len(q)
4

Set one of the four float values stored in the quaternion. See hou.Quaternion.__getitem__ for more information.

Return 4, the number of float elements in the quaternion. See hou.Quaternion.__getitem__ for more information.

Return a new quaternion containing the sum of this quaternion and another. This method lets you write quaternion1 + quaternion2.

The sum of two quaternions is defined to be the vector containing the pairwise sum of their elements.

Return a new quaternion containing the result of subtracting another quaternion from this one. This method lets you write quaternion1 - quaternion2.

Multiply this quaternion by either another quaternion or a scalar. This method lets you write quaternion1 * quaternion2 and quaternion * scalar. This method returns a new hou.Quaternion and does not change this object’s value.

The product of two quaternions is defined to be the vector containing the pairwise product of their elements. Multiplying a quaternion by a scalar multiplies each of the elements by that scalar.