Swift Look At is a custom Look At animation node that orients selected joints (eyes, head, torso, limbs, etc.) toward a target during the animation post-processing stage. While it offers functionality similar to the built-in Look At node, it takes a different approach and introduces several important improvements.
Features:
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Look Up Axis as an “Up Hint”. Beyond the two common modes—“strictly rotate around the Look Up Axis” or “ignore it”—Swift Look At supports a third industry-standard mode: treat the Look Up Axis as an up hint and dynamically derive the actual rotation axis from it, reducing unintended roll and producing more natural results.
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Anisotropic constraints. The built-in node confines rotation within a circular cone, applying the same limit in all directions. Swift Look At uses an elliptical cone, allowing independent Pitch and Yaw limits for finer control.
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Constraint-cone axis calibration. The built-in constraint cone is aligned with the initial LookAtAxis, which can be inadequate—for example, when eyes are modeled to face forward while positioned laterally, so the LookAt axis doesn’t align with the desired constraint axis. Swift Look At lets you define the cone’s orientation via a Socket, ensuring the cone points in the correct direction.
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More reasonable smoothing. The built-in node interpolates the target position; the same positional change takes the same smoothing time even when the required rotation is tiny (e.g., motion nearly parallel to the view direction). Swift Look At interpolates the angular delta, so larger rotations take longer and smaller ones settle faster—yielding more natural damping.
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Rich debug visualization to simplify troubleshooting, speed up iteration, and improve overall animation quality.
Documentation: Documentation
Demonstration: Executable Comparison
Example Project For MetaHuman: Metahuman_SLA