Quaternion members

Quaternions are not Euler angles, they are not a 3-axis system and should not be considered rotations about xyz.

Don't read the individual components of a Quaternion.
xyz and w are for advanced use cases only.

Resolution

Read from Euler angles

Read from localEulerAngles or eulerAngles instead of a Quaternion like transform.rotation.
These are Vector3 properties that represent the traditional XYZ rotations you are likely familiar with.

-transform.rotation.x
+transform.eulerAngles.x
-transform.localRotation.x
+transform.localEulerAngles.x

Note

Angles read in code may differ from those displayed in the Inspector because they are derived from the internal representation, which is a Quaternion.
If you can't work with this, consider either:

Keeping track of your own set of angles which you use to update the transform.
Using another method to do what you want. Look into vectors and familiarise yourself with common operations like the dot product.
Using a compound transform; multiple nested transforms, where each one isolates an axis of rotation you are using.

The inspector often displays user-authored rotations, where you can set rotations beyond 180° for authoring convenience. However, Quaternions don't over-rotate, and when storing Euler angles as a Quaternion that information is lost. Although, the same orientation is represented in the end.

Documentation

Manual

API Reference

See Quaternion overview for more information.

Unity, huh, how?

Quaternion members#

Resolution#

Read from Euler angles#

Note#

Documentation#

Manual#

API Reference#