How can I implement an isometric camera that follows a character?

Development Cinematics & Media
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Hi

I’m trying to implement an isometric-like camera that follows a character around. The character can rotate, but the camera never changes its rotation ( just like in Diablo 3 ).

I followed a few tutorials ( the FPS tutorial being one of them ) and samples, but everywhere you get a camera that’s controlled by a component attached to the character’s blueprint, thus rotating wherever the character rotates.

I read about something called PlayerCameraManager and a PlayerController, but since I’m totally new to Unreal Engine, I’ve no idea what do those classes represent nor how to use them to my advantage ( I searched the documentation pages and the forums - both show a great amount of subject on both, but every subject is pretty advanced and doesn’t treat on what they actually are ).

So could someone please direct me to a page that would explain what those managers are, and why do we need a separate PlayerController class, since the samples showed that we can pretty much control the character any way we want just by subclassing the ACharacter class?

I really appreciate all the help I can get.
Cheers,

2

I managed to find how to set up a camera that ignores the rotation of the character it’s attached to - simply use a SpringArm component, setting it’s ‘Absolute Rotation’ flag to false in the blueprint’s ConstructionScript.

Still not sure about the purpose of the PlayerController and PlayerCameraManager classes though…

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I’m doing something similar and just figured some of this stuff out tonight.

What you want to do is look at the top-down blueprint project template (or C++ I guess, but I did BP). The default behavior in there is for the camera to follow the player, but at a fixed rotation like Diablo.

Basically it has a player mesh with a spring between the mesh and the camera. The spring is what gives the camera distance and rotation. To see how it keeps the camera from rotating, open up the MyCharacter BP, go to component view, select SpringArm1 and note that under Transform in Details you will see “Absolute Rotation.” If you were to click that, then it specifies just “Rotation” which is not what you want because it is the rotation relative to the player.

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YOU SIR ARE the best person ever to exist ever. You just solved my horrible, horrible camera twitching problem. THANK YOU! I hereby give you ALL THE KARMA.

5

I am trying to do something similar in the third person template, please help me. Very new to UE4 I am just a 3D modeler and most of this goes way over my head quickly, can you help me accomplish that step by step???