How to use Cinemachine Camera Offset

It's a little tricky getting this to work well with a FreeLook. CameraOffset and Collider don't play well together.

People have had some success using an ordinary vcam with FramingTransposer + POV. It works well with collider, and you don't need the CameraOffset. Here is an example scene with that setup. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

 

The POV solution should not be jittery. If it is, then you might be tripping over some other issue, or maybe you didn't integrate it properly with your project.

One thing you might want to try in order to get the camera offset to work better with the collider: set the script execution order to be such that Offset happens before Collider. If you're using the latest version, the offset extension will adjust the LookAt point, so then collider will use the adjusted LookAt as a reference rather than the original LookAt.

 

The bottom line on this one is that FreeLook just isn't the optimal camera rig for an over-the shoulder TPS game. FreeLook is designed for following and looking at a player, not for following the player while looking over its shoulder at something else.

Have a look at some of the new sample scenes shipped with CM 2.6: AimingRig and 3rdPersonWithAimMode. Both of those show an over-the-shoulder setup that works much better than FreeLook. AimingRig has built-in collider logic.

 

If it's just the orbit-distance-as-a-function-of-vertical-angle that you're missing, it's quite easy to tack that on. I think it's worth the effort, because the results are much better. Are there other FreeLook features that you would miss?

 

If you attach this script to the AimingRig sample vcam, it will give you the orbit control that you're looking for.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using Cinemachine;
3.  
4. public class AimingRigDistanceController : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     public float BaseDistance = 2;
7.     public float MinAngle = -90;
8.     public float MaxAngle = 90;
9.     public AnimationCurve DistanceScale;
10.     Cinemachine3rdPersonFollow TpsFollow;
11.     Transform FollowTarget;
12.  
13.     void Start()
14.     {
15.         var vcam = GetComponentInChildren<CinemachineVirtualCamera>();
16.         if (vcam != null)
17.         {
18.             TpsFollow = vcam.GetCinemachineComponent<Cinemachine3rdPersonFollow>();
19.             FollowTarget = vcam.Follow;
20.         }
21.     }
22.  
23.     void Update()
24.     {
25.         if (TpsFollow != null && FollowTarget != null)
26.         {
27.             var xRot = FollowTarget.rotation.eulerAngles.x;
28.             if (xRot > 180)
29.                 xRot -= 360;
30.             var t = (xRot - MinAngle) / (MaxAngle - MinAngle);
31.             TpsFollow.CameraDistance = BaseDistance * DistanceScale.Evaluate(t);
32.         }
33.     }
34. }

I used these settings:



with the curve like this:



You can use a similar approach to make a distance modifier for the 3rdPersonWithAimMode-style vcam.