Please add modern Quaternion camera controls
It appears blender is using outdated euler style FPS camera controls that create problems like gimbal lock. Etc. Meaning that moving the mouse in one direction only rotates about one specific axis, and is dependent on the world orientation of the camera.
Here is a problem you can reproduce, it works in both perspective and orthographic projections: Press 7 to go into top view. Now hold Shift + 4 to Roll the camera 90 degrees about the Z axis (perpendicular to the view) Now try to rotate the camera about the object like you would normally. You will notice the mouse movement now does not work the same way as before.
All modern 3D modeling programs use Quaternion math to manipulate their rotations, making them invariant to the camera orientation and roll angle. I would recommend Blender Devs to switch to this math if they want to compete with other software packages.
Here is a reference paper, Thanks, gamasutra.com/view/feature/131686/rotating_objects_using_quaternions.php
4 Comments
I think if it didn't before, quaternions are now being used to store the view rotation. I started using python and the view rotation is a quaternion value.
Blender absolutely has support for Quats for rotations. They're enabled by default for bones, but optional for objects (like cameras). Are you a proposing a change in defaults (this discussion has happened many times over the years) or were you simply unaware that the feature is already there?
You can switch the rotation model to Quaternion in the object settings aswell as in the viewport properties panel ("n"). I believe we shouldn't switch the default as Euler is much more artist friendly and you can always switch when necessary.
I think Blender should interpolate via quaternions be default.