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[Treynolds416]

Ipq, don't argue with him (he's mr. polygon!!)

Lugnut is correct though, in 3-dimensional visual mathematic graphing the x is horizontal, the y is vertical, and z is the third dimension (iirc z+ is to the right of the page). The reason for this is because conventional 2d graphing has x as horizontal and y as vertical

Z is almost always the vertical component for 3D space as created by a computer, more specifically video games. That's all we're taking about here, I don't know why bringing in obscure examples such as camera work would help to explain why the standard for the aforementioned video games is the Z axis being vertical

[Ad Bot]

[MrPolygon]

more specifically video games. That's all we're taking about here,

Sounds like your excluding the fact that OpenGL uses a coordinate system I described in my post.

[Ipquarx]

Sounds like your excluding the fact that OpenGL uses a coordinate system I described in my post.

Game engines don't use the same coordinate system as the rendering system does for a good reason; they're made for two entirely different purposes. That's really all I should be to say, whether or not you like that is up to you.

[MrPolygon]

Game engines don't use the same coordinate system as the rendering system does for a good reason; they're made for two entirely different purposes.

What? What's the point of renaming a dimension?

[Treynolds416]

What? What's the point of renaming a dimension?

You tell us, you're the apparent expert. As you might have noticed, that's exactly what we're questioning in terms of minecraft. Why does it use y for a vertical, when almost every other game uses z?

[Zeblote]

It does not matter which is the standard and why... Z points up here nothing to discuss.

[Port]

Sounds like your excluding the fact that OpenGL uses a coordinate system I described in my post.

It's irrelevant what the renderer uses, this is about the engine. While OpenGL obviously can render in 3D, it's coordinate system is derived from being 2D. X and Y ard 2D coordinates on the camera plane, and Z is merely the sorting of primitives unless you're using some kind of perspective. This is not how world coordinates work.

[DYLANzzz]

Unity uses Y as up (if I recall correctly)
It's not irrelevant to what the renderer uses. If you draw a polygon on your flat screen and increasing the Y value making it go higher, you'd think that, well, if that's how the renderer did it, maybe I should just follow the same pattern and make my game engine like that?
Also, I'm pretty sure in my calc 3 (what ever I had before diff eq) we used Y as up but I could go look at my old notes if necessary.

Blender uses Z as up. Blockland uses Z as up. Garry's Mod uses Z as up.

Honestly, the names are just about as important as colors. Z being blue, Y being green, and Z being red. They can be whatever the hell you want to call them (or color them as I tried to make the point of). I could make my axis DOG CAT and TRAIN and it wouldn't make a difference (well, maybe syntactically but not semantically).

And MANY games and engines have an axis of Y being up. Just like there is no standard to which horizontal axis becomes North/South and East/West.

Also something from gamedev.stackexchange on the matter
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/46225/why-is-y-up-in-many-games

[Zeblote]

Unity uses Y as up (if I recall correctly)

You can change the gravity direction and rotate your camera. Boom, X goes up now!

[BluetoothBoy]

You can change the gravity direction and rotate your camera. Boom, X goes up now!

...And the worldspace remains the same.

Just so that everyone's clear: it's X and Y horizontal, Z up in real life, (most) video games (most) 3D modeling programs. Y is up in terms of camera work (programs like Adobe After Effects). HOWEVER, in certain math (often physics related things), Y is considered up, always when dealing with two-dimensional problems, and I'm pretty sure Y remains up in three-dimensional physics problems as well.

Other programs and things use them interchangeably; there is no set right and wrong for the third dimension.

[$trinick]

Am I the only person who never considered Y "up" on a 2d graph? Since I was looking down at it, I considered X left/right and Y forward/back.

[boodals 2]

Z up in real life

Define up in real life.

You can't. The earth is spherical, your up is down for people on the other side of the planet. We cant (and dont) have a coordinate system for real life that isn't relative to something else.

[$trinick]

Define up in real life.

You can't. The earth is spherical, your up is down for people on the other side of the planet. We cant (and dont) have a coordinate system for real life that isn't relative to something else.

Just because the earth is spherical doesn't mean a theoretical coordinate plane can't exist. Z is obviously relative up and if you can't understand that I really don't know what to say to you.

[boodals 2]

Just because the earth is spherical doesn't mean a theoretical coordinate plane can't exist. Z is obviously relative up and if you can't understand that I really don't know what to say to you.

A theoretical coordinate plane would be relative to something else, and is just that, theoretical. It wouldn't be a real thing, just something that humans have created to help work things out.

There is no defined 0, 0, 0 of existence, although I suppose you could argue that the big bang is, if you believe in it, or perhaps there is something that we haven't discovered yet.

Edit: Actually, if the big bang theory is real, then it probably will be defined as 0, 0, 0, but I doubt that it would give us a direction for x y and z..

[Lugnut]

Am I the only person who never considered Y "up" on a 2d graph? Since I was looking down at it, I considered X left/right and Y forward/back.

it's always the "x and y coordinate plane"
On that plane (which you find written on a whiteboard) y is literally up pointing towards the ceiling
When they add z, the only place it can go is out from the whiteboard
I usually perceive math with y is up (until I get into 3d objects anyway) and games as if they were top down - like legend of Zelda. One step "up" really just adds one to the y variable.

Boodals, we're talking relativity here. Everything is relative to another.