At the moment I'm rotating an object about its local yaw, pitch and roll axes using matrices as follows:
D3DXMATRIX matYaw; D3DXMatrixRotationAxis(&matYaw, &up, OrientationDelta.x); //Build a yaw rotation axis
D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&forward, &forward, &matYaw); D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&right, &right, &matYaw); //Apply the yaw transformation
D3DXMATRIX matPitch; D3DXMatrixRotationAxis(&matPitch, &right, OrientationDelta.y); //Build a pitch rotation axis
D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&forward, &forward, &matPitch); D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&up, &up, &matPitch); //Apply the pitch transformation
D3DXMATRIX matRoll; D3DXMatrixRotationAxis(&matRoll, &forward, OrientationDelta.z); //Build a roll rotation axis
D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&right, &right, &matRoll); D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&up, &up, &matRoll); //Apply the roll transformation
OrientationMatrix *= matPitch*matYaw*matRoll; //Adjust the orientation matrix
Here, I'm rotating incrementally about three local axis vectors: up, forward and right. I am doing a small amount of rotation per frame (a delta value rather than an actual value) because I need to rotate the up, forward and right vectors along with my object to ensure that they stay as local axes.
I'm interested in converting this to use quaternions so that I don't have to worry about reorthogonalising my three local axis vectors every frame by taking vector cross products, etc... but I can't see how I'd do it. Surely to ensure that the object continues to rotate about its local yaw, pitch and roll axes, I'll need to keep using my three vectors and also my rotation matrices like I have above?
Thanks for your help!