I basically have a model viewer application. At the base of the project there is the main camera that the player uses to move around the level and when the user clicks on a component or on the list of component’s, I change camera’s to the component’s camera. Currently, I just blend from one camera to the other. The only problem is that sometimes when blending between camera’s it will clip through the object. Is there a way to maybe set up an intermediate camera blend so that it blends around the object instead of straight through it? Or if there would be an easier or smarter way to do this that would also be helpful. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Set View Target with Blend is a fire & forget solution but quite inflexible.
Is there a way to maybe set up an
intermediate camera blend so that it
blends around the object instead of
straight through it?
You could SphereTrace from the current cam to the component and check whether there is something in the way. If something blocks the trace, find a spot to the left/right/above of the obstruction and a place a dummy actor there you can blend to. And then blend again to the final destination.
Another way is to place a camera on a springarm and take advantage of the build-in collision. Instead of blending between cameras, save the pawn’s current loc as start location and move the entire pawn to target location. Once ready to go back, move the pawn back to start location. Timeline + lerp would work well here. The auto collision might be enough for you, especially if you enable the camera lag to smooth things out.
Yet another way is to create a spline path for the camera to follow. You’d need to implement some rudimentary path finding here. Nothing fancy, just location(s) where nothing blocks the way.
- create spline point at your current location
- direct sphere trace to object
- if it fails and something is in the way, trace to the left/right/above obstacle, place point 2 there
- place point 3 at the destination
- glide the camera along the smooth interpolated spline using a Timeline.
This will give you the best overall results and the most control. At this point nothing should stop you from doing a vertical loop if you so desire.
edit: I’ll just add that the last bit I described works pretty well - first hand experience. It allows one to move the camera in a very controlled way, including the rotation. The movement can also be interrupted and reversed at any time which is often problematic when using Set View because it does not track current location during the blend (only 99% sure only on this, though).
Thank you! That really helped me out.
My camera already had a spring arm on
it and I had already tried attempting
your second suggestion but, the spring
arm doesn’t really like the way I
wanted to move it haha.
It’s temperamental, true. Maybe if you make the probe size quite big… Who knows.
Since the model was at the end point
of my spring arm I was able to just
line trace if it collided with the
destination camera and rotate the
spring arm to the destination camera
and then blend to it.
Sounds feasible, actually. Easy does it in many cases.
Good luck with the rest!
Thank you! That really helped me out. My camera already had a spring arm on it and I had already tried attempting your second suggestion but, the spring arm doesn’t really like the way I wanted to move it haha.
Since the model was at the end point of my spring arm I was able to just line trace if it collided with the destination camera and rotate the spring arm to the destination camera and then blend to it.
I might look into spline pathing though just to gain a little more control but for now I think I’ll test out this rotation method first.
I know this is basically another question, but what is a good way to handle going from static camera to static camera? So if I have a component selected and the current camera is a static one (not the main camera that moves around the scene) what should I do in that situation? Blend back to the main camera, rotate it, and blend to new static camera? It just seems like a lot of movement (currently what I am doing)
Not sure if I understood your right but you should be able to blend between the cameras that belong to the components without the need to go back to the pawn.