I’ve been trying to build various different camera views for a project. So far I have a eye-level cam which is a normal firstperson blueprint.
What I’d like to do is have a camera that is able to move over the scene, locked to looking down, but with ability to zoom in and out. So far the closest i’ve gotten is with the topdowncharacter. I tweaked it so the camera is high up and by clicking the mouse the camera follows the player on the ground, which is made invisible… the problem is the camera stops whenever the player on the ground hits anything and theres no zoom function.
Any suggestion on how to create this sort of basic camera set-up? What would be ideal is the basic stater project type cam, the freecam, but just locked to look down…
You could create a basic actor with collision set to none and mesh as invisible (i use a sphere), restricted to a certain axis at distance (i set mine to the floor of the map).
attach a spring arm and camera, and put the movement components on the actor.
in addition the zooming you could just adjust the spring arm length.
alternatively i followed this tutorial once, seemed to do the job if a bit long winded
I’ll look into that workflow you suggested and also watch the video. It seems similar to what i’ve been trying… disabling collision on my ground based person would work but he sinks through the floor. When you say restricted axis at distance… is that a way of forcing a mesh to float at a certain height? That would be perfect as i could just force my actor mesh to float around above all the buildings and the camera would just follow him from above!
Yes, i believe there is. if you open up your actor and go onto the movement component (mine i think is a floating Pawn movement component, cant remember how i go that, think i checked a box some where)
you should see in the Details panel a “Planar Movement” section where you can specify “Constrain to plain”, see image below
