I’m making a 3D tactical RPG with free camera movement. I want to be able to fly over the characters with the camera, without the camera leaping forward to look past them. My camera pawn is a camera attached to a spring arm attached to an invisible sphere (I followed a Youtube series on how to make a functioning RTS camera). I also successfully managed to get the sphere to climb hills. I know I could just set the invisible sphere to fly above their heads, but I want the sphere set low so I can get those cinematic camera angles. If I could outright turn the forced zooming thing off, that would be cool. If I could set it to ignore certain actors, that would be very cool.
Thanks in advance.
It looks like the spring arm is detecting collision with the other pawns. I recommend changing it to ignore pawns. (in the collision settings - you may have to use Custom collision instead of a preset, or find a preset you like) Then the landscape will still keep the camera from passing through it, but it won’t jump in and out when it passes through nearby pawns.
Thanks for the answer. Like I said, I’m a complete noob… so how might I go about creating custom collision for my spring arm? The only option under Collision in the details panel for my spring arm is “Can Ever Affect Navigation”. There is another group called Camera Collision, which includes options for “Probe Size”, “Probe Channel”, and “Do Collision Test” (turning this one off eliminates the initial problem, but then my camera passes through the terrain). There is no clear way to apply a preset or a custom collision.
That’s a good point - the problem might not be quite as simple as I thought, if it’s only letting you choose to collide on Visibility or Camera trace channels, instead of on Object Types like I was thinking.
You should keep the Collision Test turned on.
I guess the simplest way to handle this would be to edit your Character or Pawn blueprint (whichever one you’re using, whatever it’s called, and click on the Capsule component (usually the component list is in the top left corner of the blueprint editor), and then in the Details pane on the right of the blueprint editor, set the trace channel stuff for the pawn class so that it Ignores the Camera channel, and then make sure your spring arm Probe Channel uses that same channel (camera).
That way it should pass right through Pawns, and I think the terrain blocks camera channel already so the spring arm should collide with the terrain, still.
I’m thinking of this all off the top of my head, so let me know if it works.
Yep. changing the collision settings and both the capsule and the character mesh to ignore camera results in it passing through characters, but not terrain. This is ideal. I’ll just have to do this for every object that I want the camera to ignore. Thanks for the help!
You’re welcome It was actually just a guess, so I’m glad I guessed correctly. if my answer helped you, please mark it as the Approved Answer (I think it’s a green checkmark next to the upvote/downvote buttons on the top left corner of my answer).
Also keep in mind a couple of things to save you a lot of work:
If you change the collision settings for a blueprint/asset, it will apply that setting as the default for all actors from that blueprint that you place in a level from then on. This will keep you from having to do one of the other approaches below:
There’s a tool called Property Matrix Editor or something like that, which I think you can get to by selecting the actors in the level where you want to change all of them at once, then right click and I think it’s an option in the pop up menu.
You might be able to do this in the details pane anyway for some kinds of properties all the selected actors have in common. The Property Matrix Editor or whatever it’s called, just lets you edit them all to be something different if you want, like a spreadsheet, where this details pane way sets them all to the same thing.
It was actually just a guess, so I’m glad I guessed correctly. if my answer helped you, please mark it as the Approved Answer (I think it’s a green checkmark next to the upvote/downvote buttons on the top left corner of my answer).