Question Cinemachine collder distance limit problem

Hi!
I'm using a freelook camera with a Cinemachine Collider for my third-person game.
Since there are a lot of trees with the capsule colliders in my scene, I don't want the camera to be pulled forward every single time when a tree is in line of sight (Transparent Layers isn't an option, because I don't want my camera to go through trees freely). So I adjusted the distance limit (set it to 2). It works fine with trees in LOS. But the camera now falls through the objects that are not thick enough and gets behind them (sometimes even if these objects aren't in the LOS in the first place). It happens whenever my character is too close to them. I think that Cinemachine does exactly what it should do and there's no bug (although at first, I thought that distance limit works ONLY when objects get between the camera and the character), but this definitely isn't a behavior I need. In my case - the camera falls through the mountain walls (terrain). When distance limit is set to 0 that doesn't happen at all.

Is there a way to avoid this?

The ideal solution would be the ability to choose layers that are impenetrable no matter what, or layers for which distance limit will always be "the actual distance to the target". But... there's nothing like that in the options.

 

Oh wow, Transparent layers works! BUT Only if the tree is a game object, separate from the terrain. But I placed trees using terrain tools, so... the camera is able to pass through them and doesn't behave like it should, when "Preserve Tree Prototype Layers" is on. Is there a way to solve this problem?

 

There is a tree prefab I placed as a game object. I set this tree's layer as a "Transparent layer" in the Cinemachine collider settings. And as you said, in this case, the camera isn't able to stay inside the tree mesh (or the collider), it jumps out of it forward whenever this tree is too close to the camera.
But when I place the tree on the terrain using the "Paint trees" tool (I turned on the "Preserve Tree Prototype Layers" option in the terrain settings) the camera won't do that jump forward when these trees are in the line of sight, it just stays inside the mesh, as if I'm using the "Ignore Tag" option.

If I set Minimum Distance From Target large enough camera just ignores everything that is close to the character and goes through the objects. So I keep it at a minimum.

 

I used the same tree prefab in both cases I described (I placed it as a game object and used it in the "Paint Trees" tool). I made a layer named "Trees" and assigned it to this prefab.

 

"Preserve Tree Prototype Layers" option in terrain settings is turned on in this case. It preserves tree prefab's original layer ("Trees" in my case). If I turn this option off, all trees that were placed using the "Paint Trees" tool will be the same layer as the terrain itself.

 

First question: Well, I guess so. Second question: Yes. My character would walk through them otherwise, wouldn't he? And he does exactly that when I turn the capsule collider off in the tree prefab.

 

I hope that you'll be able to track this issue and solve it. Enjoy your meal!

 

Btw it's pretty easy to replicate. I just did it in the new project (2019.4.2f1) using the third-person controller from standard assets, one free SpeedTree, and Cinemachine 2.6.0.
Project is a bit big, so here's the link
Two trees on the terrain. One is placed as a game object, the other one is placed using terrain's "Paint trees" tool.

 

No, sorry, it doesn't At least in my case. That's weird. I can clearly see that the camera stays inside the tree that was placed with the terrain "paint trees" tool. It's not like it lags then jumps out of the collider. It 100% stays inside. There's a clear visual difference. Here's the video I recorded right now: link

The first time I test the tree that was manually placed as a game object. Everything works as it should.
The second one is the tree placed on the terrain with the "paint trees" tool. The camera ignores the tree completely.

It is clear that the camera just ignores the second tree and gets stuck inside the mesh. It's even more obvious in my project where threes use a double-sided shader, I can see that the camera doesn't jump out and stays inside. And yeah, I checked the collider.

 

I know what I saw. Camera frustum also stays inside the tree. You can SEE in the video that camera CLIPS through the mesh. Damping is set to 0. It doesn't do the jump! It's more than obvious with a double-sided shader in my other project.

 

You should check both trees ) Broadleaf_Mobile gameobject is the one you probably trying to check. One is placed as a game object (the left one, Broadleaf_Mobile in the hierarchy) and the other one, the right one, is placed with the tree painter.

 

The collider gizmos do not show up if the "paint trees" tool was used. I think it's a part of terrain somehow (the tree painted with the tree painter tool, I mean). But the collider is there, you can check it, just bump into the tree. If you turn the collider off in the prefab of Broadleaf_Mobile (CollisionObject0 and CollisionObject1) and save all the changes to prefab, the character will be able to go through both trees, since they use the same prefab.

 

Ah, good to know! Thanks for that notification. Meanwhile, I had to replace all of the trees that could get in the way of the camera (with the ones that are placed as game objects that are separate from the terrain). Luckily, I don't have many trees that get in the way of the camera in my project so that I can place them without using terrain tools... But it may not be the best solution for some other developer, so it's good to know that this issue won't remain without attention. Thanks!

 

This is the exact issue I am still encountering. Is there an update / fix on the terrain tree behaviour?