Matrix

Matrix

Definition

A Matrix is typically used as a linear transformation to map vectors to vectors. That is: Y = MX where X is a Vector and M is a Matrix applying any or all transformations (scale, rotate, translate).

There are a few special matrices:

zero matrix is the Matrix with all zero entries.

0 0 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

The Identity Matrix is the matrix with 1 on the diagonal entries and 0 for all other entries.

1 0 0

0

1

0

0

0

1

A Matrix is invertible if there is a matrix M-1 where MM-1 = M-1 = I.

The transpose of a matrix M = [mij] is MT = [mji]. This causes the rows of M to become the columns of MT.

1 1 1 1 2 3

2

2

2

1

2

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

A Matrix is symmetric if M = MT.

X A B

A

X

C

B

C

X

Where X, A, B, and C equal numbers

jME includes two types of Matrix classes: Matrix3f and Matrix4f. Matrix3f is a 3x3 matrix and is the most commonly used (able to handle scaling and rotating), while Matrix4f is a 4x4 matrix that can also handle translation.

Transformations

Multiplying a Vector with a Matrix allows the Vector to be transformed. Either rotating, scaling or translating that Vector.

Scaling

If a diagonal Matrix, defined by D = [dij] and dij = 0 for i != j, has all positive entries it is a scaling matrix. If di is greater than 1 then the resulting Vector will grow, while if di is less than 1 it will shrink.

Rotation

A rotation matrix requires that the transpose and inverse are the same matrix (R-1 = RT). The rotation matrix R can then be calculated as: R = I + (sin(angle)) S + (1 - cos(angle)S2 where S is:

0 u2 -u1

-u2

0

u0

u1

-u0

0

Translation

Translation requires a 4x4 matrix, where the Vector (x,y,z) is mapped to (x,y,z,1) for multiplication. The Translation Matrix is then defined as:

M T

ST

1

where M is the 3x3 matrix (containing any rotation/scale information), T is the translation Vector and ST is the transpose Vector of T. 1 is just a constant.

jME Class

Both Matrix3f and Matrix4f store their values as floats and are publicly available as (m00, m01, m02, …, mNN) where N is either 2 or 3.

Most methods are straight forward, and I will leave documentation to the Javadoc.