Jerky horrible movement with CineMachine on a path

I'm trying to make a simple camera follow the player along a path using the 'dolly track'.
I've set the path and camera up, it's following the object I set, it's very straightforward, I'm not doing anything unusual, but the camera movement it terrible. As soon as the camera nears a waypoint on the path it jumps ahead along the path by a lot. The camera movement was smooth up to then, but as soon as it gets near a way point it jumps ahead, and then it's also not in line with the thing it's meant to be following either. Anyone know why this is and how to fix it?

 

Thanks, but yes it's exactly the same. Still very jerky movement near waypoints. The camera is also almost never in line with the thing it's meant to be following, even though it's set on 'hard contstraint' which to me sounds like it should be exactly in line. It's either way ahead or way behind the target.

 

I've been trying it in the scene view rather than in play mode, it seems to be slightly better in play mode, i.e. when the game is running, than when I was testing it in the scene view. But it's still a noticable jump when going between waypoints, particularly when starting a downward slope from a previously flat area.


edit - I think we were replying at the same time I'll try those things you mentioned....

 

Unfortunately still the same. Very jerky and way off the target object

 

Ok thanks, if a video would be be ok that would be a lot easier to make. Where should I send it?

 

Sure...

 

Thanks for the info. The settings I had in that screenshot were the result of trying to change things to solve the problem that the default settings caused, so I was changing all the settings to see if anything would help. I tried what you suggested, it's pretty much exactly the same result. Still very jerky movement near waypoints and the camera gets far off from the target in some places along the path.

The smooth path component was actually much worse than the regular one. As well as doing the jerky movement and not being aligned with the target, it was creating it's own curves to smooth between the points and taking the camera off where I didn't want it to be.

Having played with the tangent values a bit I'm guessing what it's doing is to the divide the path into sections and then move the camera from one section to the next, but it's not making even sections so the movement is not even. There are more sections, closer together where there is a curve and fewer on the straight parts, which makes sense from an optimisation point of view, but not for the smooth movement of the camera. It goes slower on the straight parts and fast on the 'bends' because the path is unevenly subdivided, which is probably why it gets further away from the target too. The player (target) is almost off the screen in some places, and it's only a short section of tunnel I'm trying to walk along.

 

I did make a video of what's happening, but of course youtube is as useful as an inflatable dartboard so it doesn't work. I might try again tomorrow, but I've already wasted an entire day with absolutely nothing to show for it.

 

Ok the video is working now...

I was walking really slow in the video at the start to show how the camera jumps forward, and then you can see it goes far in front of the target. Does that help at all?

 

Looks like your video is unlisted/private.

 

Sorry! It's really not my day today is it?! I set it to unlisted, I think you should be able to see it now?

 

Thanks for the explanation, I'm sure that's exactly the issue. The tunnel slopes downwards at the start, so yes that section could be considered concave if you're looking at it from below, but the camera is above so maybe not?

It's a horizontal movement, so a top down view wouldn't help, but I made a screenshot to show you...



After doing this I experimented with the location of the path. Originally I put the path where I wanted the camera to be. I tested putting it on the ground where the character walks and adding an offset to the camera. The top of the slope is much smoother, but now the problem occurs at the bottom instead, and the camera is still very much not aligned with the target while on the slope. So that pretty much confirms it has problems with a concave shaped path. So basically this camera path system is only going to be useful for games on a flat surface, in a straight line, which doesn't seem very useful at all tbh.

Maybe I'll have to set up two or more separate paths, one on the flat sections, and then one on the slope and have the camera move or blend between them... something like that might work? It seems like a lot of extra effort for what is really a very common scenario in a game environment. Going down a slope must be extremely common in games so I'm sure many people will end up having a similar issue.

 

Exactly yes, those two things. By aligned I meant that the target/player would be centered in the camera all the way along the path, as it was at the start. The reason I don't use the look at target is because that will cause rotation on the camera which I don't want.

I made an illustration to show what I thought would happen vs what seems to be happening. 1 is what I was expecting, 2 is what seems to be happening. The blue line represents the path, the green is the camera, yellow is describing where the camera is on the path/relative to the path. Does this make sense or am I just guessing/interpreting it wrong?



In the end I've realised using a camera path is not going to work for me, so I'm using a '2D' camera (it's constrained to the X and Y axis) instead. I thought the path would be ideal for this scenario because it's quite a narrow, contained space that the player can move down in one direction, which seemed exactly what a camera path would be good for but in the end it's not so much, at least not how it currently works with curved paths.

p.s. I didn't see a way to do the cinemachine camera constrained to X Y axis, so I'm using a different asset. Is there a way to do that?

 

I love being on track with my cameras!

The transposer component moves in all 3 directions though doesn't it? So it will go in depth (Z) too, where as I want it to only move in the X and Y axis. I couldn't see any way to constrain it, but maybe I missed that somewhere.