Posted this in another thread, but this might be a better place.
So I am trying to make my camera automatically adjust based on the slope of terrain that my player is on. Flat ground will keep the camera where it is, going up a hill will lower the camera a bit, and going down a hill will raise the camera a bit.
I am relatively new to Blueprint and I think I have the logic correct (in my head at least), but I am having trouble making it work correctly in Blueprint.
I am doing all of this in my character controller, and I originally started with the 3rd Person Template, if anyone has any guidance or suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.
Use line traces. one ahead of player one behind.
As result you should get 3 points in d3 space: 2 trace hits and one for feet location of player pawn. Get Z values of both trace hits, and player feet location. Calculate both angles: for trace ahead and behind player.
You will have 4 cases:
player goes uphill, player goes downhill - just calculate slope, for eg difference of both hit Z values to where player feet are.
Player is on top of hill - i think default angle.
Player is in hole - pick forward trace Z value to calculate slope, (fake rear with negative Z of forward one).
So when you have those values, do average of forward angle and rear angle. Multiply that by some parameter. An you will have desired rotation of camera.
Now best way to manage camera imo:
add “camera arm” enable some decent angular lag, keep velocity lag low.
Connect camera to that arm.
Remember arm default rotation as some value.
Add your calculated angle (from traces), to camera arm rotation.
And because you enabled lag for camera arm, it should move very smooth.
PS. you can also add a bit of such camera rotation (slightly turn it to sides) for situation when player walks along slope (ie. slope is on left - right direction)
I did not make it with vector math, because of two things:
would be confusing why and how stuff works
details on level (like small rocks anything with collision etc.) can screw vector math. So it would need some smothing, or edditional checks calculations
So instead i did it almost like i described 6 years ago, only for left/right, but there are macros that easily can be used for forward/back calculations.
no idea about your levels. That means how much detail you will have on floors and slopes. This is important, because with low level detail all that tracing could be done with just one trace and normal vector to surface. However if its common that such trace would pick up pebble or other small detail, you need more traces to make average out of it. For eg. in standard 3rd person level, sometimes trace picked up tiny “crack” between meshes and decided player is in valley. So this is first problem.
more traces means more “wasted” resources and cpu power, so this must be minimal, ie. as few as possible.
i do not know how you want your camera react to different situations. Honestl;y i could not think about any camera reaction to slope et. that would not annoy player and add something to gameplay.
This all needs some thinking, and planning, but that planning needs knowledge about game mechanics etc.
I think i know what you want to do. For eg. camera zooms in and pans down when you walk to the edge, or shows more up slope when you climbing up. Systems for making that should be coded at beginning of development, but tuned and finalized after you have solid gfameplay and levels, and idea about how game works.
So i can add some camera modifications and “generic” ie. programmer like behavior for camera. Without thinking if that is good or bad for gameplay.
hi, I’m looking for recreating something like this for my 3d platform game. i want that the camera follow the slopes going to stand up when the player is uphill, while lowering when the player is downhill. I repeat that I am really very grateful to you for the work you have already done, as I would not have been able to do it alone
It traces bunch of points around character, then gets average out of it, and calculates dot product (cosinus beetwen vectors). Then that is used to move camera arm. Done only for forward axis, but calculations are ready for left right also.
but it controls rotation of camera arm, and because camera is attached to it, it also moves.
Camera arm adds lag and can smooth out movement.
That stuff works like in movie on YT you posted link to.
All code is there just adjust to your liking.
You have all math there, so copy logic over to your project with pawn control rotation.
I put all in macros and somewhat commented them, should not be hard.
Pawn rotation control and all that had some niuances to make it working and i forgot how to setup that correctly in unreal.
That is the stuff in “use control pawn rotation” when you select it it overwrites camera rotation.
But that is part of your game setup, independent from code i made. I know i just unchecked that and made example code work. Just code your own camera behavior. You have it all there.
im not good to translate that in blueprint, can u help me?
