“Average” of multiple quaternions?

Question

I\'m trying to make the switch from matrices to quaternions for skeletal animation in my OpenGL program, but I\'ve encountered a problem:

Given a number of unit quat

Answer 1

This is my implementation in python of Tolga Birdal's algorithm:

import numpy as np

def quatWAvgMarkley(Q, weights):
    '''
    Averaging Quaternions.

    Arguments:
        Q(ndarray): an Mx4 ndarray of quaternions.
        weights(list): an M elements list, a weight for each quaternion.
    '''

    # Form the symmetric accumulator matrix
    A = np.zeros((4, 4))
    M = Q.shape[0]
    wSum = 0

    for i in range(M):
        q = Q[i, :]
        w_i = weights[i]
        A += w_i * (np.outer(q, q)) # rank 1 update
        wSum += w_i

    # scale
    A /= wSum

    # Get the eigenvector corresponding to largest eigen value
    return np.linalg.eigh(A)[1][:, -1]