8 replies to this topic

[Noor]

Hi,

Recently, I interviewed someone who was described to me as a computer graphics expert. Being my first interview, I didn't know what kind of questions to ask him in order to evaluate his expertise. Luckily my first question was, "What is gimbal lock?", and to my surprise, he didn't know. :o I can't imagine a person at an "expert" or an even "advanced" level not knowing what gimble lock is. :eek:
Anyway, if I have to interview more people, I can't go in armed with just one question! What are some effective interview questions to determine a person's knowledge of 3D graphics? :blush:

Regards,

:)

[godEcho]

while its a surprise that an expert doesnt know what a gimble lock lock is, usually, one doesnt ask questions in an interview that can just be looked up. i mean, this isnt a pop quick for developers or something. usually, a measure of expertise would be the projects the person has worked on.

what questions you ask, depends on why you're doing an interview, as well as who (or what) you're doing the interview for. i'd imagine, you'd want to ask questions that your readers would be interested in. you'd want to go a step beyond asking common knoweldge questions, and to something that'd actually require someone in tune with the topic to answer.

ie:

rather than ask what the gimbal lock is, ask how the expert deals with it. ask what he'd/she'd suggest to people struggling with it, stuff like that.

just an idea.

[countzero]

In my opinion, there are many areas in conputer graphics. Maybe the guy is not a expert in _all_ of the areas.

[EvilSmile]

Also,
Don't rule out the possibility that the person knew about it and just didn't know that it was *called* a gimbal lock.

[davepermen]

i remember how i explained one of my friends, a 3d artist, what gimbal lock is.

he looked at me, irritated, and thought what the hell did he talked about..



2 days later he came to me explained about some rotating problem he found out while thinking about movement of objects..


guess what it was:D

[Noor]

What davepermen? My guess is :rolleyes: ... gimbal lock... Is that true? :blush:

[davepermen]

you're _SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO_ near to it:D

okay, i tell you. you're _RIGHT_:D

[Yau]

What is a gimbal lock???

[Dia]

Gimbal lock is where a rotation maps one principle axis onto another, resulting in a loss of a degree of freedom.
An example of when gimbal lock occurs is say for example, you you want to rotate around the x-axis, and what you get is a rotation around the y-axis. Any system that uses Eular angles will have problems with gimbal lock.

The way to fix that problem is to use Quaternions. Take a look at the following webpage and it will explain everything in detail:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programmi...ers/default.asp