When do I need to use quaternions?

Question

I have been carrying out 2D and 3D operations, including graphics, for many years and have never used quaternions so I don\'t have a feel for them. I know that they can be used

Answer 1

Quaternions have many advantages over Euler angles and are often preferable for 3D rotations:

• Easier (and well-defined) interpolation between quaternions (or: orientations): the resulting movement has constant angular velocity around a single axis, which is often aesthetically more pleasing. This process is called "slerp" and critical for animation/rotation blending. Furthermore, quaternion interpolation does not suffer from Gimbal locks.
• They are easy to renormalize.

Disadvantages:

• The main disadvantage is that they require a bit more math and are less intuitive than Euler/Cardanic angles.
• Compared to affine transformation matrices, Quaternions only contain a rotation, and no translation and scaling.