# Not able to visualize orientation with Quaternions in vtu files

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/not-able-to-visualize-orientation-with-quaternions-in-vtu-files/17742
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [September 26, 2026, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/not-able-to-visualize-orientation-with-quaternions-in-vtu-files/17742 "2026-09-26T15:57:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![pfahd](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/2bfe46/32.png) [@pfahd](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/pfahd)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2026, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/not-able-to-visualize-orientation-with-quaternions-in-vtu-files/17742/1 "2026-09-26T15:57:42Z")

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I am trying to visualize orientation of spherical particles. I have vtu files which has 4-component Quaternions in it, as can be seen in the screenshot. (or see the file: [config\_t90.vtu](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/short-url/8qkhayDA72E3EyVEEILK2m82zJv.vtu) (1.3 KB) )

 ![qtrnon](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/default/original/3X/e/0/e00ee0cdd9c47bf91ae06433d78766d3e7365010.png)

However, I am not able to properly visualize the orientation/rotations using it - it doesn’t change. I am using 3D Glyph for Representation, using Sphere as `Glyph Type`, Quaternion as `Orientation Mode`, and column “Quaternion” as `Orientation vectors`, etc.

 ![tmp](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/default/original/3X/2/c/2c3eeb5b98e002bc35ddf55d093116eb3d7fa85f.png)

Glyphs also looks really large in size. Setting radius and Scale Factor to 1.0 in `Properties` tab alone does not give true size. But setting raidus = 0.005 (true radius of particle in meter) in `Display(GeometryRepresentation)` tab makes it closer to true size. But still the overlap sometimes and is not perfect. What am I doing wrong here? Here is my state file for the same file : [state\_file.pvsm](https://discourse.paraview.org/uploads/short-url/mAR6hdnmawY0qPy9AVMWLicF8vv.pvsm) (296.0 KB)