Unable to properly calculate a normal/direction vector from pitch and yaw

Question

My pitches and yaws are messed up. I have the pitch and yaw of the pad but the beam's pitch and yaw are messed up. How do i calculate the normal vector for the pad's pitch and yaw? I tried a crap load of math off of stackoverflow but they all failed so far.

What I first tried was adding 90 to the pitch of the pad but the yaw stayed messed up:

And this is what happens when I used to the pad's pitch and yaw as is to calculate the direction vector:

What I tried doing next was split the beam's pitch and yaw from the pad's pitch and yaw and have them both separately calculated. That mostly worked but the yaw was still completely messed up.

What I used to calculate the direction vector from yaw and pitch of the beams was a util minecraft uses to do so for mobs:

public static Vec3d getVectorForRotation3d(float pitch, float yaw) {
    float f = MathHelper.cos(-yaw * 0.017453292F - (float) Math.PI);
    float f1 = MathHelper.sin(-yaw * 0.017453292F - (float) Math.PI);
    float f2 = -MathHelper.cos(-pitch * 0.017453292F);
    float f3 = MathHelper.sin(-pitch * 0.017453292F);
    return new Vec3d((double) (f1 * f2), (double) f3, (double) (f * f2));
}

But that failed obviously, so lastly, i tried the following using the pad's pitch:

    double pitch = ((te.getPadPitch() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
    double yaw = ((te.getPadYaw() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
    double x = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.cos(yaw);
    double y = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.sin(yaw);
    double z = Math.cos(pitch);
    Vec3d lookvec = new Vec3d(x, y, z);

And this worked perfectly for the yaw but failed for the pitch

the pitch and yaw are both calculated in the way the player head rotates. The pad's pitch and yaw are 100% correct when I use them on the pad itself but mess up when I use them on the beam. These are both using GL functions

Although the pitch and yaw don't respect the player's head's orientation system, it works with the pad.

For example, this is the yaw of the mirror in this pic and it's perfect for it's current value And the pad is rotated like this:

    GlStateManager.rotate(te.getPadYaw(), 0, 0, 1);
    GlStateManager.rotate(te.getPadPitch(), 1, 0, 0);

And the line is drawn as such:

    public static void drawConnection(BlockPos pos1, BlockPos pos2, Color color) {
    GlStateManager.pushMatrix();

    GL11.glLineWidth(1);

    GlStateManager.disableTexture2D();
    GlStateManager.color(color.getRed(), color.getGreen(), color.getBlue(), 0.7f);
    GlStateManager.translate(0.5, 0.7, 0.5);

    VertexBuffer vb = Tessellator.getInstance().getBuffer();
    vb.begin(GL11.GL_LINES, DefaultVertexFormats.POSITION);
    vb.pos(pos2.getX() - pos1.getX(), pos2.getY() - pos1.getY(), pos2.getZ() - pos1.getZ()).endVertex();
    vb.pos(0, 0, 0).endVertex();
    Tessellator.getInstance().draw();

    GlStateManager.enableTexture2D();

    GlStateManager.popMatrix();
}

I'm getting the pos1 and pos2 like so [CURRENTLY, MOST RECENTLY]:

        double pitch = ((te.getPadPitch() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
    double yaw = ((te.getPadYaw() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
    double x = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.cos(yaw);
    double y = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.sin(yaw);
    double z = Math.cos(pitch);
    Vec3d lookvec = new Vec3d(x, y, z);

    Vec3d centervec = new Vec3d(te.getPos().getX() + 0.5, te.getPos().getY() + 0.8, te.getPos().getZ() + 0.5);
    Vec3d startvec = centervec.add(lookvec);

    Vec3d end = startvec.add(new Vec3d(lookvec.xCoord * 30, lookvec.yCoord * 30, lookvec.zCoord * 30));
    RayTraceResult result = te.getWorld().rayTraceBlocks(startvec, end, true, false, true);
    Utils.drawConnection(te.getPos(), result.getBlockPos(), Color.RED);

How do i calculate the normal vector or a vector that's perpendicular to the pad properly from the pitch and yaw of the pad?

I'm at a loss at this point because I tried nearly everything I found on google for the most part with no luck.

EDIT: I've been told that splitting the beam pitch and yaw from the pad's pitch and yaw shouldn't be necessary, and I agreed but I just can't get it to work otherwise. Why is the beam drawing math different from the pad math?

Answer 1

It's kind of hard for me to say this in comment, so I put this in an answer. when I saw:

double pitch = ((te.getPadPitch() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
double yaw = ((te.getPadYaw() + 90) * Math.PI) / 180;
double x = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.cos(yaw); \\Line 3 is HERE <---
double y = Math.sin(pitch) * Math.sin(yaw);
double z = Math.cos(pitch);
Vec3d lookvec = new Vec3d(x, y, z);

Why did you use sin(pitch) and cos(yaw) ? cos() calculates your x, so why did you use sin(pitch) ? It makes sense for both y and z , but I think your math is a bit off, or just a syntax error, or I'm completely wrong (Which is probably most likely).

Answer 2

Im not sure if this is your problem but for me mc returned some messed up yaw positions when i was dealing with them this is how i got that fixed

    if (Yaw < -180.0) Yaw += 360;
    else if (Yaw > 180) Yaw -= 360;

Answer 3

Minecraft yaw rotations are a bit wierd. They are not clamped between 0 and 360. For example, if you rotate your head to the right for a very long time, you can end up with rotations that are over a 1000 degrees. When clamped between 0 and 360 degrees, 1000 degrees becomes 280 degrees. If the number is negative, then you should subtract the number from 360. This is an example on clamping an angle between 0 and 360:

public static float clamp(float angle) {
    angle = angle % 360; // Gets the remainder when dividing angle by 360
    if(angle < 0) {
        angle = 360 - angle;
    }
    return angle;
}

If you set your angles with this, things will always be between 0 and 360. Also, this is a snippet directly from MCP source code where rotation yaw/pitch was translated into a rotation vector:

/**
 * Creates a Vec3 using the pitch and yaw of the entities rotation.
 */
protected final Vec3 getVectorForRotation(float pitch, float yaw)
{
    float f = MathHelper.cos(-yaw * 0.017453292F - (float)Math.PI);
    float f1 = MathHelper.sin(-yaw * 0.017453292F - (float)Math.PI);
    float f2 = -MathHelper.cos(-pitch * 0.017453292F);
    float f3 = MathHelper.sin(-pitch * 0.017453292F);
    return new Vec3(f1 * f2, f3, f * f2);
}