does anyone know a way to have the camera track an object while “set view target with blend” is active?
set view target with blend
It has always been more of a fire & forget solution, not meant to do anything fancy. It’s a not a very smart node, it does not keep track of things. If the target is moving and blend time is greater than 0, then it already tracks the target, kind of. You may just expect more than it can do.
Could you briefly explain what needs tracking under what circumstances?
I have some kind of a configurator, there are two pawns, each with a spring arm and a camera, each camera is pointing at a certain object in scene, i’m using the set view target with blend node to switch the cameras, problem is when it is switching the camera move is not nice, as in the camera just looks at the floor until it gets to it reaches the final view. i want the view blend to happen with the camera always pointing at a target.
That won’t happen with the Set View Target - there is no control over what it’s doing. Half the time the node does not even know what its doing; as in, do not try to interrupt its interpolation as you will confuse it. I mean, you could try forcing the camera manager to look at target but set blend will hate it.
You have a more than a couple of options:
- a basic one: use a Timeline and interpolate camera transforms between A->B, you can use the Look At Rotation node to lock onto a target
- a more involved one: use a spline to draw the ideal traverse path and only then use a Timeline to glide the camera along it. Think a camera rail.
- use the camera manager class to completely take over camera
I’m not sure spline would work since the camera needs to go from to A to B from any point, here is what i’m trying to replicate https://youtu.be/DFrTOL7DM_8?t=64
I think the timeline option might work, will try it, thank you!
Splines are fully dynamic, can be spawned and destroyed on a whim and can shaped at runtime.
This is a job for a dedicated Pawn that has a camera. We do not switch cameras, we move the pawn from A–> B. I’d use a timeline here. Technically you could even Tick it.
I will try this, Thank you!
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Hey, i managed to replicate the same effect with timeline, but still need the camera to look at the object during the transition. at the moment camera still looks at floor till it reaches the final destination.
not sure how to do that!
You’d need to find Look At Rotation. Could you clarify one thing. You said you want to track the target during transition but the vid that you linked does not really track it, it just slides the cam to a new location. Could you clarify which effect you’re after?
Also, consider this approach, you’ll get quite a bit of freedom, control and easily configurable visual clues as to where the cam ends up being and which way it’s facing.
- I have this product actor with dummy arrow components indicating the camera angle I want to end up with once I switch to a new vantage point:
- I cycle between those arrows (Camera Angles):
Here the camera moves to where the cube is (the configurator’s point of interest of sorts, I reckon). But we use the arrow to find the angle. This is not tracking anything and ends up behaving like so:
Since we move the existing Pawn, you can now use the pawn to orbit the new target location - as seen in the vid.
I’ll try to post a vid with actual tracking.
here is what i have right now, i need the camera to keep looking at the ball as it moves to the new position
As above, Find Look at Rotation:
that fixed it, thank you very much!
One note: when working with timelines: This will produce inconsistent results:
Instead, prepare data upfront, do not resample it during TL update.
Good luck with the rest!
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