orientation from velocity

I'm working on how to make a missile model point the way it's moving. I define the position with a vector and the velocity as a normalized vector that I scale for speed and time. The method that I use to extract the velocity is:

Code:

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Missile(float _speed, float _yaw, float _pitch, Vec _pos) {
        name = "Missile";
        speed = _speed;
        pos = _pos;
        yaw = _yaw;
        pitch = _pitch;
        vel.set(cosf(yaw),sinf(pitch),sinf(yaw));
        vel.normalize();
        totalTime = 10.0f;
        modelName = "missile.ms3d";
}

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The line that moves the missile, which works correctly, is:

Code:

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pos += vel * (dtimef * speed);

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Since this works, I know that the velocity vector is at least pointing in the right direction. The problem comes up when I try to render the missile:

Code:

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glPushMatrix();
glTranslatef(pos.x,pos.y,pos.z);
glRotatef(yaw*58.6319f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f);
glRotatef(pitch*58.6319f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f);
//render the model
glPopMatrix();

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The 58.6319f's are in there to convert yaw and pitch from radians to degrees, so I think that should be working, except the model points in weird directions. What am I doing wrong?

Try fiddling around with a negative in a few places; You may be using different points of origin for your rendering and your calculations, and not even realize it. Personally, I would use the components of the velocity vector instead of storing yaw and pitch.

You need to create a look at matrix. DirectX provides this functionality in the D3DX library - but for OpenGL you can find the source to create a look at matrix on several sites. Google for constructing a look-at matrix in OpenGL or something similar.