Some Questions Regarding Using The Firstpersoncontroller And Cm

Hi, first of all, thank you for CineMachine. My brief time to play with it has left some positive impressions.

I may have some noob questions here, if there's a better resource to get answers than asking please point the way. I followed the steps here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/creating-a-pov-camera.505429/ and used approach #2 to create a Virtual Camera on my child object that is rotated by the FirstPersonController script. So far so good, for basic control.

Some notes on the POV approach in #1: While I got mouselook to work, I don't understand how to couple the rotation of my main Player object so that you walk where you look (do I have to write a simple rotation script based on the mouse input in that case?).

Also, the mouselook is weird a bit, in that it seems to take the axis value from but not the amount of motion in the axis... Its hard to put in words but I'll try to explain: in a normal FPS, if I move my mouse 10cm from left to right, lets say my character will do a full 360* spin. If I move my camera slowly 10cm from left to right, my character does the same spin, just slower.

With the POV module, if I move my mouse 10cm but very fast, my rotation will only occur based on how long the mouse axis was sending a value >0 (which in this case will be a short amount since I moved the mouse quickly). Likewise, if I keep moving the mouse slowly, the rotation will occur at the max pace. So, in general, this is not what I want, I'd rather keep the traditional FPS feel.

Now, onto things I don't understand

The big draw of CineMachine for me is that I want to be able to do things like force the player to focus on an object for a short amount of time, but not to take away the control of their movement altogether (or take away the movement of the player). I've been playing with multiple virtual cameras. As I understand it, my main camera should never move and just live somewhere in the world, and I always render from the perspective of a virtual camera.

So my one "main" virtual camera is on the Character's head gameobject, and that's fine. Now, how do I force a look at, but influence the rotation of the character controller's transform so its a whole body look at, and not just a head look at? So the character controller should orbit the lookat target. Is this something CineMachine can help with? This is probably answering how to use the POV module with the main player object from above

Secondly, if I want to animate the player's body + camera for a cutscene for example, I would go to Timelines for this. Now, unfortunately I haven't figured out how to animate a simple component enabled/disabled state (so that I can turn off the character controller completely for the movement sequence) in Timelines, but I guess thats a different problem for a different thread. However, for the purpose of the animation, I would still need to animate the perspective of the camera. Would I create a second virtual camera, but parented to the player object (so vcam #2 is a sibling to my main fpc vcam), and then just animate that one however I like? Then when I turn off the 2nd vcam, the main vcam should blend to the rotation of the 2nd vcam, so the player can resume from the new position?

I'm sorry this is a wall of text! I am one toe in the water with CineMachine, I feel it would make my life easier... although the lack of traditional events in Timelines will always give me pause whether or not I can be adopted by our new CM and Timeline overlords...

 

Sorry, I will try to make some graphics later to explain this better, but for now words will be my attempt

For the overall case of enabling the POV camera:

Its a first person game. The way the FPC works now is the traditional Unity way: rotate around Y axis for the object containing the character controller, rotate around X for camera (I guess to avoid gimbal lock?). That way when I move the mouse, the actual orientation of the character on the XZ plane is spinning, and holding W to walk forward means I'm always walking in the direction I move.

If I switch to POV camera, I need to still drive the orientation of the original character controller (right now there is a dis-syncrhonization so you walk always in the forward vector of the character controller if I use POV camera). So in the new Cinemachine world, when Cinemachine controls the entire rotation on the camera (around both axis), how can I rotate my player controller so that it still works? Should I read the value from virtual camera rotation, apply the rotation to the character controller and reset the camera animation to always be 0 in the Y axis? That's essentially what I need: to translate the Y axis rotation from the camera to the Character Controller.

If I get the above working, then the cutscene case I describe will always work: Cinemachine will drive the camera rotation, I will apply the Y axis rotation to the character controller, and that way when the player hits WSAD, the forward vector of the character is always looking at the LookAt target, so using the movement keys the player will naturally always orbit the LookAt target.

Does this help?

The more I write it the simpler the problem becomes in my mind: how can I rotate the parent GameObject of the virtual camera so that it reflects intended the Y-axis rotation of the virtual camera?

 

Yes, I think we derailed a bit to focus on POV too much I would rather switch to just a vcam. I still have one question with this though, the fundamental one, how to rotate my character controller after CineMachine resolves its own rotation

Something like this in the pseudoflow below:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Assume rotation offset around Y between Character Controller and VCam Child GameObject is 0 (vcam local rotation = (x,0,z))
3.  
4. 1) Move Character Controller
5. 2) Update Virtual Camera Which is Looking At A Target from the position in 1), Virtual Camera now has a Y-axis rotation
6. 3) Character Controller.rotation.y += VirtualCamera.rotation.y
7. 4) VirtualCamera.rotation.y = 0
8.  

 

Well CineMachine has very nice tracking algorithms that let you llook at a target, or allow the target to move a bit in some margin of error in the frame to make things more natural, or add some noise function etc. I want to benefit from that motion in cinematic sequences, without losing control of the player's body.

So Cinemachine is driving my LookAt, and I read back the forward vector Y-rotation from Cinemachine in time to still apply that rotation to the character's body before the frame ends.

I really need to make this a video or something, I will try to do that this evening.

 

Hey @Gregoryl I am still struggling with the issue above explained as below:

`Also, the mouselook is weird a bit, in that it seems to take the axis value from but not the amount of motion in the axis... Its hard to put in words but I'll try to explain: in a normal FPS, if I move my mouse 10cm from left to right, lets say my character will do a full 360* spin. If I move my camera slowly 10cm from left to right, my character does the same spin, just slower.

With the POV module, if I move my mouse 10cm but very fast, my rotation will only occur based on how long the mouse axis was sending a value >0 (which in this case will be a short amount since I moved the mouse quickly). Likewise, if I keep moving the mouse slowly, the rotation will occur at the max pace. So, in general, this is not what I want, I'd rather keep the traditional FPS feel.`

This is extremely noticeable when trying to use touch input. Ive tried the scripts you input above, but i still get the exact same results. Is there any way you can please help with this? A good idea is to look at how PUBG / Call of duty mobile are doing it, basically i cant do touch flicks with the current Cinemachine PoV setup.

Please help! Its the last thing needed to make my aiming great for my mobile game

 

Hey @

Thank you so much for the reply. So will the speed value (while under input value gain) be used as the sensitivity multiplier then?

 

Hey @Gregoryl Thank you very much for the replies.

I have made these changes and it does seem to feel better and snappier.

Thank you very much for being willing to help!