Hey all! So I’m tinkering around with making a FPP/TPP shooter using the Third Person Starter project. I’ve followed tutorials to get me started but the one thing that I can’t seem to solve is the head bobbing. So the FPP tutorials that use the full body mannekin have you attach the FPP Camera to the head socket - which works fine. However, I’ve noticed that there is a slight sway or bobbing that happens when you’re idle. Makes sense, because the head socket drives the camera. So whatever animations are attached will of course effect the camera. Were this a FPS using only the arms mesh, then the camera would be driving everything instead. Now I’ve seen other games like PUBG or Destiny that use a full body mesh for FPP and there is no subtle swaying/bobbing caused by idle animations influencing the camera. So my question is: How do these games achieve a full body FPP and yet the camera remains still? It wouldn’t be such a nuisance to me if the animation swaying didnt effect aiming as well. Are there any tutorials out there I’m failing to Google properly? lol
What I recommend is Assign the First Person Camera to the “Head Socket” to the First Person Character. (Your character BP should contain both the First Person and Third Person Skeletal Meshes) When you enter First Person, assign your FP Camera that is attached to the First Person Characters Head Socket. Then when you switch back to Third Person, just assign your third person follow camera.
You want to make sure that when you enter First Person mode, you Hide the Third Person character from the Owning Player (from yourself) so that you don’t see your third person character when in first person and same for when you’re in third person, hide the first person character.
Wait…Ohhhhhhhhh!
So is that the secret then for FPSs? (The ones that use a full body character while in fpp and tpp view?) They use 2 separate character meshes for the same player? This actually helps explain a lot of what I was looking at in Destiny in particular. Cape-like materials on the legs would be present anytime you were in tpp, but in fpp those articles were no longer present. You also could never actually see your own torso - just your legs and arms (which might suggest the camera drives the arms like normal, but not the legs). And where one thought they were aiming in fpp, compared to another player’s view looking at them, they were actually aiming much lower - or at least the tpp’s mesh and gun were at least.
Thank you so much!
Typically yes! The third person character usually uses generic animations that seem like they would fit the animations of the first person character. But typically while in first person mode, your third person animations wont matter as your first person character’s animations are what determine the location of your bullet projectiles/traces. Then the third person character uses its generic animations to simulate the same effect to other players. But you will still want to use animations that allow for your character to shoot properly in tps mode.
Also, there are some situations (non-traditional cases) where game developers will use F/TPS characters. All this means is that they use 1 mesh for first and third person and they have specific animations that align the FPS camera and the TPS camera in accordance with realistic alignment. This method is the newer style of TPS/FPS style games and requires a decent knowledge of animation offsets and algorithms that allow for proper animation alignment in accordance with the respective camera. You can learn how to do this style character in UE4 pretty easily if you follow enough tutorials. Goodluck!