How to locate camera facing down with gluLookAt equivalent?

My world is a field. The coordinates and the axis are described in the image below:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1397[/ATTACH]

I want to locate a camera above the field, at location C=(W/2,H/2,-Z1), facing down. The extrinsic matrix RT that I should get for this is:

(1, 0, 0, W/2)
(0, 1, 0, H/2)
(0, 0, 1, Z1 )
(0, 0, 0, 1  )

I want to get the RT using gluLookAt equivalent method described here. I had to modify vz calculation by adding minus since I locate the camera along the -Z axis and not +Z axis.

static Mat4x4 lookAt(Vec3 eye, Vec3 target, Vec3 up)
{
    // the vector to the target is in the negative z direction.
    Vec3 vz = -(target - eye).normalize();
    Vec3 vx = vnl_cross_3d(up, vz).normalize();
    Vec3 vy = vnl_cross_3d(vz, vx);

    Mat4x4 inverseViewMatrix;
    inverseViewMatrix.set_row(0, Vec4( vx[0], vy[0], vz[0], eye[0] ));
    inverseViewMatrix.set_row(1, Vec4( vx[1], vy[1], vz[1], eye[1] ));
    inverseViewMatrix.set_row(2, Vec4( vx[2], vy[2], vz[2], eye[2] ));
    inverseViewMatrix.set_row(3, Vec4( 0    , 0    , 0    , 1      ));

    Mat4x4 result = vnl_inverse(inverseViewMatrix); 
    return result;
}

To get the desired RT here are the eye, target and up that I define:

Vec3 eye(W/2,H/2,-Z1);  //location relative to world left-top (0,0,0) 
Vec3 target(W/2,H/2,0); //location of point on field relative to world left-top (0,0,0)
Vec3 up(0,-1,0);
RT = lookAt(eye, target, up);

But, the RT I get is not the one that I should get (the one that described above). What eye, target and up I should define to the desired RT?

[QUOTE=theateist;1283389]I want to locate a camera above the field, at location C=(W/2,H/2,-Z1), facing down.

What eye, target and up I should define to the desired RT?[/QUOTE]

eye = position where the camera is located: vec3(W/2,H/2,-Z1)
target = where you want to look at, e.g. vec3(0, 0, 0) would be the scenes origin
up = the cameras upward direction, vec3(0, 1, 0) is always a good choice, except you are looking exactly downwards vec3(0, -N, 0)

there is a math library for openGL, using it would save you some time you would otherwise spend searching for math mistakes:
http://glm.g-truc.net/0.9.7/index.html

If you’re using a conventional OpenGL projection transformation, the image is incorrect. The axis labelled “-Z” should be “+Z”, as OpenGL conventionally uses right-handed coordinate systems for model space and eye space (clip space and NDC are left-handed due to the projection transformation having a negative determinant).

target=(W/2,H/2,0), eye=(W/2,H/2,Z1), up=(0,1,0).

Also, your lookAt() function is wrong. First, vx, vy and vz are the rows of the matrix, not the columns. Second, you can’t just place the translation component in the right-hand column. You need to multiply the matrix formed by vx,vy,vz by a translation of -eye. In this particular case, it will mostly work as the left-hand matrix is the identity matrix, so the only issue is that eye needs to be negated.

See the description of gluLookAt.

Are eye and target vectors in world coordinate systems?

RT*(0,0,0,1) will be eye, RT*(0,0,Z,1) will be on the line through eye and target, RT*(0,Y,Z,1) will be on the plane through eye and target parallel to up, and RT*(X,0,0,1) will be on the line through eye perpendicular to that plane.

OpenGL doesn’t have “world” coordinates. Modern OpenGL has clip coordinates and normalised device coordinates; anything else is up to the application. The fixed-function pipeline also has object coordinates (i.e. the original coordinates passed to glVertex() etc) and eye coordinates (the result of transforming object coordinates by the model-view matrix).

gluLookAt() concatenates the generated matrix with the current matrix (which one depends upon the glMatrixMode() setting, but it’s usually the model-view matrix), so the vectors are in whichever coordinate system the current matrix represents prior to concatenating the look-at matrix.