CameraTron9000 Asset

Hi, this is the forum page for the CameraTron9000 asset found on the Unity Asset Store.

This is the best place to post if you have any support requests, questions, comments, feature suggestions, etc....


The asset's store page posting can be found here(coming soon)

 

No, you need to do it in the Asset Store topic.

 

@Lurking-Ninja
Thank you, this post has been moved now.

 

The camera looks very interesting, but the instructions are really poor. We really really don't need to know every detail in a one hour and a half video Just make 2-3 videos explaining how to setup the camera for different kinds of games, like an rts, a simulation, a shooter etc..

 

@SpyrosUn

I'm glad you find it interesting
I completely agree on the long video and the need for making a shorter video(s), and I will be posting a shorter one here in the next few days, sorry for the delay.

Just to clarify, in case there was any confusion, the asset is specifically designed for strategy styled games, like RTS, city-builders, turn-based, strategy 4X, but can also be set-up for use in a top-down RPG styled game by using the 'follow game object' coroutine.

I'll try and hit some points in a short video for these types of games. But feel free to get creative with it!

Thanks for the feedback

 

Hi.

I am looking for a camera system that allows me to place them as in an F1 broadcast

Several cameras in the path that, through triggers, are activated, follow a vehicle, zoom to zoom, then zoom out, etc., etc. What a TV director would do, automatically.

I've tried some products (not many, honestly) but they don't meet my expectations. In summary, I am looking to be able to stream the events of my game as automatically as possible.

Would this product cover those needs?

Thank you.

 

@Barritico

First of all, thank you for considering purchasing the CameraTron9000.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have, but before I give you an answer, may I ask you to please clarify what exactly you mean by "zoom to zoom"?

 

Sorry....

"zoom in" and/or "zoom out" according to the desired effect.

 

@Barritico

Thanks! Ok, now that we got that clarified, I can answer your question.

So, let's break down the question into the sub-questions and I'll answer each one.
- The triggers your talking about, which I assume will be something like, (The car passes a certain line on the track) kind of trigger, and doing camera switching, well, no matter the camera you purchase, you're still going to need to do a little bit of coding to make your triggers and switch between camera. Now, keep in mind, if you are going to use multiple objects/instances of the CameraTron9000, then you'll need to make sure you do a little coding to make sure the selection framework in CameraTron9000 works the way you want it to(Like only for the main camera that the player moves around). Although for a racing game, I doubt you will be using it.

- The CameraTron9000 is fully capable of following a game object, now what I would suggest, is instead of using the following coroutine in the CameraTron9000, is to child the CameraTron9000 surface controller object to the car game object at the same location as the car, and make sure the camera object (which also holds the zoom animation curve script) is behind the surface controller(probably negative on the Z axis) and then instead of using the manual zoom controls in the CameraTron9000 (which is the mouse wheel) I would just write a short coroutine that makes the camera zoom along the zoom animation curve you design, at whatever speed you feel good about. This way the camera always stays behind the car. Although you can always be more creative with your zoom animation curve and make it whip around to the side of the car and look towards it. The zoom animation curve system in the CameraTron9000 asset makes it pretty easy to get the zoom animation you want, even if you're new to animation curves.

- After the zoom in, you can use the same coroutine you wrote to just make it zoom out, so I'd suggest you make it modular for zooming in or out. You'll have to at least write that coroutine for any camera asset you purchase, but it's not a very challenging one to do. If you're new to coding, I'd be happy to offer some advice on how to start and approach it.

- And about the automatic part, that would be handled by the triggers you design.


So, tldr, yes you can do what you're trying to do with the CameraTron9000 asset, it'll just take a little legwork on your part. But no more legwork than you'd find with any other camera asset.

I hope this completely answered your question!
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask!

 

Hello,

I am excited to use this camera in my Space Game. However, I can not get it to work. ( Later we can discuss using this without a Unity Terrain. )

Issue:
New purchase. First run. Much of functionality in Demo does not work. I see the selection rectangle form. I get movement on the x / z plane with edge and keyboard. However the camera will not rotate with mouse drag or keyboard. I set up a new empty scene with a Unity Terrain and verified this same result with the prefab.
System is:
Intel i7, 16GB RAM
Radeon GPU
Unity 2019.3.0f1

Thank you,
Daniel

P.S. I set script order with an execution order script like:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/105354
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/89961

 

@StarFluke

Hi, and first off, thank you for purchasing the asset!

I'd be happy to help you get everything working. In regards to the rotation with the mouse and keyboard not working, did you set up a key to use for the rotation, and ensure that everything is enabled?

Also, I see that you said you're making a space game. Does this game have a Unity Terrain Game Object? Because most of the CameraTron9000's scripts require Unity Terrain.
If you're not currently using one, I'd suggest just making a flat terrain, and don't render the terrain. Only the collider is really necessary. I don't really know how you plan to design your space game, but the CameraTron9000 comes with the ability to move to Unity Terrains that are above or below it with a method, so you might want to give it a try as it could allow for some interesting vertical movement options. Just something to consider.

It would be helpful if you could send me a screenshot of CameraSurfaceController script's variables in the Inspector.
It will probably take 2 screenshots worth, because it has a lot of adjustable options.

 

The settings were left at default value. Then I tried changing the keys for rotation.

 

@StarFluke

Well, everything seems to be in order, I can't imagine how the camera would simply not rotate.....

May I ask, what version of Unity are you running this on?

Also, did you get any red errors from a CameraTron9000 script in your console?
Not that, that should happen, and if it did, it'd also stop the script related to x-z axis movement, which you said you was still functioning, so this is probably not the source of the issue, but it couldn't hurt to be thorough.

Did you use the prefab that the asset provided? The prefab ensures that all the objects are childed to the correct parent, and makes sure each game object with a unique instance of a script on it, that requires a unique instance of another script, has it assigned correctly. (Very important to make sure everything runs smoothly).

If you weren't using the prefab, I'd suggest using that, and trying it again.

If the problem persists, try uninstalling the asset, and re-importing it.
There may have been an issue when importing it.

If the problem still persists, then, if you wouldn't mind, if you could send me a copy of your Unity project. I just need the CameraTron9000 related game objects and Terrain in the project, feel free to remove anything you may be required to keep private. We'll get to the bottom of this issue.

 

• I'm using Unity 2019.3.0f1.
  • I suspect this is related to some API change.
• I'm not seeing any red errors.
• I used the Tron9000 prefab.
• Tried uninstalling the asset, and re-importing it; the problem still persists.
  
• Here is a link to the test project (420 MB)
  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vxWzQx6OmRfpgE0X14T7TxxrJ9zUoMUS/view?usp=sharing
    
  • I used MapMagic to generate the Unity Terrain.
  • Both the Tron9000 Demo and the MapMagic Terrain show the same issues

Thanks for the positive energy in your feedback!

Daniel
Starfluke: My "Space Game" project blog is at:
http://www.starfluke.com

 

@StarFluke

It may also be related to how Map Magic alters Unity Terrains. I know some assets make their own Terrain objects, instead of using Unity Terrains.
Unity has made a lot of changes regarding Unity Terrains in the past few years, however, that shouldn't actually affect the rotation functionality, more of the height adjustments, but I think 2019.3.0f1 should have all the relevant changes to Unity Terrain, as far as I know at least.

I have a strong suspicion that the asset you used for script execution order is the culprit though. I used the built-in script execution order, found in the project settings. This is because the camSharedVariables script helps easily control whether to enable or disable certain functionalities all in a centralized place, like rotation or movement.

It should look like this:
Try using the built-in script execution order.


If that doesn't help then, would you please re-send me your Unity Project, but please zip the file, any of these zip types will do (.zip, .rar, .7z).

 

@StarFluke

Hey there, it's been a few days and I haven't heard back from to see if we were able to solve your issues.
I just want to follow up with you to make sure everything is working on you end.
If not, let me know, and we'll keep working on it until we get everything working and running smoothly.


Best Regards,
StrategyTron

 

@StarFluke

I did some more digging, because I found your issue strange. Can you please send a screenshot of your Project Settings -> Input Manager -> ?

It should look like this:

 

Is there not a camera angle adjuster in the inspector for this asset or am I just missing it somewhere? Like when mouse front/back pan mode is disabled I'm stuck at such a low camera angle.

 

@JuddMasters

You'll need to edit the existing zoom animation curve animations or make a custom zoom animation curve. The default zoom animation curve is set to Horizontal Zoom.

Let me know if you have any other questions

 

Hello! I have bought your camera and added your prefab to my scene.
But I am lost trying to understand how all the different components & scripts relate to each other.
I want to do fairly basic things: change what the camera is focused on; change the camera's position so it is near that object; and follows it naturally from some position nearby.
Can you give a basic description of a) how I would programmatically set the prefab to focus on a gameobject, b) how to follow that object, c) set the relative position the camera will try to follow the object from, and d) disable the camera from listening to keyboard inputs? Thanks!

 

JohnnyGo-Time

You should be able to do all of that using the Focusable script and the Focus Tool .

Just attach the Focusable script to the object/prefab you want to focus and you can configure how the focusing works in the Focus Tool Script(located on the camera object itself). You can also configure what kind of input you want from the player to make the camera do focusing. By default the input is set to double clicking an object with a focusable script. A raycast is then done, so the object will need a collider for the raycast to hit/detect.

See image.


The relative position the camera follows the object should programmatically try and fill most of the screen space with the game object's mesh before the camera stops moving closer to the mesh, so it should be the ideal distance for most cases.
Fair warning, it's a bit of a complex operation(more so than it would seem, as is the case for a lot of camera related scripting), but if you want to edit how the relative position of the camera is determined when focusing on an object, you would need to edit a few methods in the Assets\CameraTron9000\Scripts\Tools\FocusTool\FocusTool.cs script. You may also need to write some additional methods in the CameraSurfaceController.cs script if you're wanting to control the camera rotation relative to the object being focused.
This camera system is focused on use for gameplay, not cinematics. So, when you do want to do cinematics, I'd suggest switching the camera to a different camera that is meant for cinematics, then switch back to the CameraTron9000 camera afterwards.

If you have any additional questions, just let me know, I'd be happy to help.

 

Hi, thanks for the response, but I'm sorry it hasn't helped me understand how to get this working. Please see my screencap here and advise what I have to do to get this asset working in my project. I've shown in the video that I followed the docs and response above - thanks!

 

@JohnnyGo-Time

Sorry for the late reply. Without seeing the full error logs... The first thing I'd ask is to check your package manager, and make sure you've got the Unity Input System and the Unity UI packages in your project.

Let me know if those are or aren't in your project, and if they aren't, then if putting them fixed the problem. I'll work with you as long as we need to get this issue fixed.

 

Hi yup I've had both of those packages installed the whole time:


Attached are the input errors you can see the console calls out in my youtube video.

But I don't really think the input errors are the big issue - at the most basic level, how is this camera supposed to work? As you can see in the vid, I drag & drop the prefab into my scene.
But of course I don't want the prefab to even be visible - how do I get the screen to show see what the camera is seeing? How do I tell it where to look? I've attached the Focusable script to my object as you say above but that doesn't change anything.
Thanks.

 

Regarding the problems you are having, they are indeed strange, as I've never had someone have an issue like this.
However, I think I may just have solved it!

The Issue:
Okay, regarding the input errors and the stop Coroutine error, which would crash all the CameraTron9000 scripts causing the whole thing not to work, they have to do with the new Unity Input System Package.
You're project must be fairly new, because most people are still using the old input system, myself included. When you install the Input System Package, you're given the option to only use the new input system, which is what you selected for your project.
I don't know why Unity even asks the user to do this, because you can use both the old and the new input systems at the same time, without issues. It's quite unnecessary of Unity to do so, and just invites issues, like the one you encountered.

The Solution:
So, what you need to do is go to Edit -> Project Settings -> Player -> Other Settings -> Find Active Input Handling option, and set it to Both or Input Manager.

This should solve the issue of the errors you were having. If it does fix it, please do let us know here on the forum page, so anyone else that encounters this issue can see that this solved the issues.

Edit: For anyone that had the same issue and came here looking for answers. I have heard from the person with this issue via email, and this solution did solve the problem. This has now, also been noted on the store page posting.