How can I rotate a Pawn a full 360 Degrees?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Did anyone look into rotating a Pawn in full 3d space (without gimbal lock)? So let’s say you are rotating a spaceship in space.

Right now, I am updating the C++ code. I’ve been replacing the Rotator.Pitch additions with Quaternion math instead. It all pretty much works except for I have a case where my pawn flips over on his head when I hit 90 or -90 degrees I think. Looks like I will have to dig into debugging this deeper

To give more info, in my Character subclass I am setting bUseControllerRotationPitch to true and bUseControllerRotationYaw to true. This way my pawn always rotates with the camera. The Camera can rotate fine in 360 degrees but my Pawn flips

2

#My Function for you

Dear SandboxGod,

Yes Adding to rotation can be tricky without quaternions

I wrote a function to streamline the process

enjoy!

//the additive amount of rotation is the expected input (like FRotator(0,3,0) if used in tick
FORCEINLINE void AddToActorRotation(AActor* TheActor, const FRotator& AddRot) const
{
	if (!TheActor) return;

	FTransform TheTransform = TheActor->GetTransform();
	TheTransform.ConcatenateRotation(AddRot.Quaternion());
	TheTransform.NormalizeRotation();
	TheActor->SetActorTransform(TheTransform);
}
3

Ah you have shown me I was approaching the problem the wrong way. I was updating the code to always apply Quaternions. But instead, a much simplier solution is to simply just add the rotation directly to the Actor. Cool, you solved my issue!!! Thank you very much!

4

Okay I also got my original solution to work as well. For anyone that is curious, I inherited the PlayerController. From there, I overrided AddPitchInput(), AddYawInput(), & AddRollInput(). I replaced all those methods with a Quaternion implementation. In my PlayerCameraManager subclass, I override ProcessViewRotation() and added a Quaternion implementation there as well and normalized my Quat for good measure. In my character subclass, I set bUseController Pitch/Yaw/Roll all to true.

That was pretty much all I had to do. My character now rotates in full 360 deg when set to PHYS_Flying

5

I’m like beginner level to code really, where would I be putting this function to get my pawn to 360 degree movement? And is there anything else I have to do after I compile it? Cause I did the function but not sure what to do with it now.

6

Hey sandboxgod,

would you mind sharing your quaternion implementation? I’m working on a similar project and I’ve been reading on quaternions for far too many hours and gotten none the wiser.

7

What if you want to do this with the control rotation and not the actor? I need the entire character to rotate including the way in which it handles. I tried doing this

FTransform orgRot(FRotationMatrix::MakeFromZX(GetCapsuleComponent()->GetComponentLocation(), GetCapsuleComponent()->GetForwardVector()).ToQuat());
     FQuat addInRot = FRotator(0, mouseX, 0).Quaternion();
     orgRot.ConcatenateRotation(addInRot);
     Controller->SetControlRotation(orgRot.Rotator());

and it results in the character turning over on its head as I approach the poles of the world.

8

can you try to change your line 3 to:

orgRot.SetRotation(addInRot * orgRot.GetRotation());