[C#] How To Reduce Distance Between Objects?

I've developed a 3rd person camera controller similar to traditional RPG camera controls. The camera is placed a little bit behind the player and had the chance of colliding with walls and objects. I've done some research on how to fix it and a lot of people say "Make a raycast go from the player to the camera and reduce distance if there's a collision" which is a great starting point but I'm completely confused on how I'd go about reducing the distance. I've attempted to look up tutorials or other answers based on this but I cannot find anything. Does anyone know how? I'd appreciate it!

 

From the top of my head I would say that you'd have to subtract the camera position with the difference of the positions of the parent and the raycast hit.
In pseudo code it looks like this: (assuming you have the camera as a child of the player game object)

Code (CSharp):

1. public Camera myCam; // if this script is attached to the camera, you don't need this variable
2. private Vector3 camOffset;
3.  
4. void Start()
5. {
6.     // store the initial camera position relative to the parent GO
7.     camOffset = mycam.GetParent().transform.position - mycam.transform.position;
8. }
9.  
10. void Update()
11. {
12.     if (raycast between camera and player gets a collision) // never used raycast...
13.     {
14.         Vector3 hit = collision;
15.         Vector3 newCampos = camOffset - (mycam.GetParent().transform.position - hit);
16.         myCam.transform.Translate(newCampos); // if that doesn't work, you probably have to add the property Space.World right after newCampos
17.     }
18. }

 

You can use the function "OnCollisionEnter()" to detect collisions and "Vector3.MoveTowards()" ito get the camera closer to the player (this script should be attached to the camera object):

Code (CSharp):

1. public float speed;
2. public transform character;
3.  
4. void OnCollisionObject(Collision col){
5.  
6. transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position, character.position, speed * Time.deltaTime);
7.  
8. }

That should works. Have a good day !

 

Thanks, I didn't realize that function existed!

Thanks a lot man, I appreciate the help! Moments like these make me a little sad, because how was I supposed to figure this out on my own? Lol.