Aesthetic Beauty of Rotation
Ergun Akleman and Vinod Srinivasan · 2008
In this paper, we present the rotation project in our introductory animation class. During lectures we cover the mathematical aesthetics of rotations by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of using vector, matrix and quaternion algebras to create rotations. Students create animated virtual sculptures using only combinations of periodic functions. The abstract moving sculptures that are produced reveal that unusual and interesting aesthetics can be created using simple rotation. The first animation course in M.S. Visualization Sciences program, 3D Modeling and Animation, provides an introduction to the mathematical, aesthetic and programmable aspects of computer graphics and visualization [1]. In this paper, we describe how we teach these different aspects using one of the class projects as an example. Figure 1 shows a set of example frames from student animations.