Im just wondering if there is a way to lock an axis that aligns with a camera for a billboard.
I would like to use a billboard as an LOD to save on Geometry rendering, so I need it to align on the parent object so it will face the camera but along the same rotation as the parent object for when it falls or is knocked over.
Im not sure if Im just not explaining myself very well or if no one knows how to do this…
There has to be a way to do something similar, but Im stumped, please, if anyone is able to give an idea of what an alternative is PLEASE let me know.
not sure if you’ve figured anything out yet, but as far as I know billboards have their own inbuilt code to rotate towards the camera by default. I have a work around: Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - Text face player - YouTube follow the ideals set in this tutorial but with a box plastered with a material of your billboard image (flattened on the X axis to 0). I was looking for the answer for my own purposes and have come up with this if you wish to keep the image from tilting back and only spinning with the camera:
Again I went another step as I was aiming for trees rocks etc to be a 2d object in a 3d world but wanted a permanent shadow. So i duplicated the first box and removed the cast shadow from the original box. the duplicated box will cast a permanent shadow (rotation may need to be played with if lighting angles are a problem). Personally i like the stationary second sprite as it melded well with the rotating one as you walk around it.
Hope this helps!
I ended up using a similar idea but instead of using a box I just used a Paper 2D Sprite. The only concern I have now is I am unsure how many more calculations per second this method uses vs the built-in billboards that automatically rotate.