Conceptually a quaternion can store the rotation around an axis by some degree. Now, what is the numerically most robust and least calculation intensive way to rotate the axis?
For example when i have a quaternion, which rotates 90 degrees around the y-axis and i want those 90 degrees to be applied to some other arbitrary axis, described by a normalized vector.
EDIT: Since this also came up i added an answer on how to correctly change the axis a quaternion rotates around with another quaternion.
It is a bit unclear what your actual goal is by doing what you describe.
In order to actually keep the angle but change the axis you would use Quaternion.ToAngleAxis
, alter the axis and then pass it back into Quaternion.AngleAxis
like e.g.
Quaternion someRotation;
someRotation.ToAngleAxis(out var angle, out var axis);
var newAxis = Vector3.up;
var newRotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, new axis);
Or you rotate an existing Quaternion
by another one using *
like
Quaternion newRotation = someRotation * Quaternion.Euler(90, 0, 0);
which would take the existing rotation and rotate it by 90° around the X axis.