Complete Panda3d beginner here…
I want to get my camera orientation so that Y is up, X is left-to-right, and Z is straight towards the camera. I am doing it this way:
set the pitch of the camera to -90, so that I am looking down. Now it looks like X is “up” and “Y” is left-to-right
now set the roll of the camera to 90. Now Y is indeed up as I need, but increasing the X coordinate goes left, rather than right. What am I doing wrong here?
You can simply set the coordinate-system variable to y-up-right in your Config.prc file to switch Panda to an Y-up coordinate system. The default setting is z-up-right.
If you were to want the Z axis to point forward from the camera, instead of backwards, what you actually want is a left-handed coordinate system, where as the default is right-handed. To achieve this, you would set the above setting to y-up-left and rotate the camera 180° around the Y axis.
I think I’ll just go with “Y goes from north to south, X goes from west to east” by setting the camera heading and pitch to 90, -90. Though I am still confused as to why the axes are inverted.