Rotate camera around itself - ios

Question

I am using two virtual joysticks to move my camera around the scene. The left stick controls the position and the right one controls the rotation.
When using the right stick, the camera rotates, but it seems that the camera rotates around the center point of the model.
This is my code:
fileprivate func rotateCamera(_ x: Float, _ y: Float)
{
if let cameraNode = self.cameraNode
{
let moveX = x / 50.0
let rotated = SCNMatrix4Rotate(cameraNode.transform, moveX, 0, 1, 0)
cameraNode.transform = rotated
}
}
I have also tried this code:
fileprivate func rotateCamera(_ x: Float, _ y: Float)
{
if let cameraNode = self.cameraNode
{
let moveX = x / 50.0
cameraNode.rotate(by: SCNQuaternion(moveX, 0, 1, 0), aroundTarget: cameraNode.transform)
}
}
But the camera just jumps around. What is my error here?

Answer 1

There are many ways to handle rotation, some are very suitable for giving headaches to the coder.
It sounds like the model is at 0,0,0, meaning it’s in the center of the world, and the camera is tranformed to a certain location. In the first example using matrices, you basically rotate that transformation. So you transform first, then rotate, which yes will cause it to rotate around the origin (0,0,0).
What you should do instead, to rotate the camera in local space, is rotate the camera first in local space and then translate it to its position in world space.
Translation x rotation matrix results in rotation in world space
Rotation x translation matrix results in rotation in local space
So a solution is to remove the translation from the camera first (moving it back to 0,0,0), then apply the rotation matrix, and then reapply the translation. This comes down to the same result as starting with an identity matrix. For example:
let rotated = SCNMatrix4Rotate(SCNMatrixIdentity, moveX, 0, 1, 0)
cameraNode.transform = SCNMatrix4Multiply(rotated, cameraNode.transform)