We Don’t Really Need Quaternions in Geometric Modeling, Computer Graphics and Animation: Here Is Why

It has long been believed that quaternions are more efficient to use for 3D rotations than ordinary rotation approach. It is also commonly believed that the geometric meaning of quaternions is more obvious. One can also easily recover rotation axis and rotation angle from the representation of a rotation quaternion. In this paper we present important features of ordinary rotation that are critical in judging which technique should be used in a particular application. We show that everything quaternion rotation can do, ordinary rotation can do as well and, actually, more efficiently, including interpolation of rotations.