I must say that I am really confused by how a view matrix is constructed and works.

First, there are 3 terms: view matrix, lookat matrix, and camera transformation matrix. Are those 3 the same, or different things. From what I undestand, the camera transformation matrix is basically the model matrix of the camera, and the view matrix is the inverse of that. The lookat matrix is basically for going from world space to view space, and I think I undestand how it works (doing dot products for projecting a point into another coordinate system).

I am also confused by the fact that sometimes, it seems like the view matrix is built by translation and dot products, and some other times, it is built with translation and rotation (with cos and sin).

There are also quaternions. When you convert a quaternion to a matrix, what kind of matrix is this?

Can someone explain to me how it really works, or point me towards a good resource.

Thank you.