Character's Mesh rotation snaps to 0 rotation, after a seemingly unrelated input

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Good day everyone,
Here’s the problem. I wanted to make a basic movement system where, the player by default can look around and the character moves relative to the direction of the camera/controller. So the character can run facing toward the camera by pressing S(backward) key. Close examples that come to mind are Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain, Tomb Raider… etc. So what I did was to set the Mesh’s “bAbsoluteRotation” to true, so that it doesn’t rotate with the Camera. But I want it to rotate with the camera while aiming, thus I set it to false, in the event of a right click press, and then set it to true again on release, however it seemed that on release it snaps back to a default (0.0f,0.0f,0.0f) rotation. But when I took a closer look I saw that on release it actually stays on that rotation until a little bump to the mouse or until a W/A/S/D input when it snaps to said rotation. I don’t understand why it works this way, since the mouse input function should do nothing to the mesh’s rotation. But here are the code snips:

BaseCharacter.h

UCLASS()
class PROJECT_ATLAS_API ABaseCharacter : public ACharacter
{
	GENERATED_BODY()
public:
	ABaseCharacter();
	UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category = Controller)
		class APlayerController* CharacterController;
	UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category = Camera)
		class USpringArmComponent* CharacterSpringArm;
	UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category = Camera)
		class UCameraComponent* CharacterCamera;
	//FUNCTIONS
	void MoveForward(float argValue);    //W__S (1.0__-1.0)
	void MoveRight(float argValue);        //D__A (1.0 __ -1.0)
	void Turn(float argValue);                  //Mouse X (1.0)
	void LookUp(float argValue);             //Mouse Y (-1.0)

	void Aim(); //RMB press
	void ReleaseAim(); //RMB release
protected:
	virtual void BeginPlay() override;
};

BaseCharacter.cpp

#include "Public/BaseCharacter.h"
#include "GameFramework/SpringArmComponent.h"
#include "GameFramework/PlayerController.h"
#include "Components/SkeletalMeshComponent.h"
#include "Camera/CameraComponent.h"
#include "Components/CapsuleComponent.h"

ABaseCharacter::ABaseCharacter()
{
	PrimaryActorTick.bCanEverTick = true;

	CharacterSpringArm = CreateDefaultSubobject<USpringArmComponent>(TEXT("CharacterSpringArmText"));
	CharacterSpringArm->SetupAttachment(RootComponent);
	CharacterSpringArm->TargetArmLength = 150.0f;
	CharacterSpringArm->bUsePawnControlRotation = true;

	CharacterCamera = CreateDefaultSubobject<UCameraComponent>(TEXT("CharacterCameraText"));
	CharacterCamera->SetupAttachment(CharacterSpringArm, USpringArmComponent::SocketName);
}

// Called when the game starts or when spawned
void ABaseCharacter::BeginPlay()
{
	Super::BeginPlay();
	if (GetController())
	{
		CharacterController = dynamic_cast<APlayerController*>(GetController());
	}
	GetMesh()->bAbsoluteRotation = true;
}

// Called every frame
void ABaseCharacter::Tick(float DeltaTime)
{
	Super::Tick(DeltaTime);
}

// Called to bind functionality to input
void ABaseCharacter::SetupPlayerInputComponent(UInputComponent* PlayerInputComponent)
{
	Super::SetupPlayerInputComponent(PlayerInputComponent);

	PlayerInputComponent->BindAxis("MoveForward", this, &ABaseCharacter::MoveForward);
	PlayerInputComponent->BindAxis("MoveRight", this, &ABaseCharacter::MoveRight);
	PlayerInputComponent->BindAxis("Turn", this, &ABaseCharacter::Turn);
	PlayerInputComponent->BindAxis("LookUp", this, &ABaseCharacter::LookUp);

	PlayerInputComponent->BindAction("Aim", IE_Pressed, this, &ABaseCharacter::Aim);
	PlayerInputComponent->BindAction("Aim", IE_Released, this, &ABaseCharacter::ReleaseAim);
}
void ABaseCharacter::MoveForward(float argValue)
{
	AddMovementInput(GetActorForwardVector()*argValue);
}
void ABaseCharacter::MoveRight(float argValue)
{
	AddMovementInput(CharacterCamera->GetRightVector()*argValue);
}
void ABaseCharacter::Turn(float argValue)
{
	if (CharacterController)
	{
		CharacterController->AddYawInput(argValue);
	}
}
void ABaseCharacter::LookUp(float argValue)
{
	if (CharacterController)
	{
		CharacterController->AddPitchInput(argValue);
	}
}
void ABaseCharacter::Aim()
{
	GetMesh()->bAbsoluteRotation = false;
	bIsAiming = true;
}
void ABaseCharacter::ReleaseAim()
{
	GetMesh()->bAbsoluteRotation = true;
	bIsAiming = false;
}

Why does it snap back? How would I get it to stay? If there’s a better way I’d appreciate it.
Thanks for your time and have a good one.

2

Hello there, I managed to solve this issue, buy approaching the problem from a different angle. I took a look at the “Third Person Template” and instead of manually playing with “bAbsoluteRotation” of the Mesh, I used the idea from the template which was to use the rotation inheritance between the controller and the RootComponent (which the Mesh is a child of).
More specifically toogling

bUseControllerRotationPitch = false/true
bUseControllerRotationYaw = false/true;
bUseControllerRotationRoll = false/true;

//and

GetCharacterMovement()->bOrientRotationToMovement = false/true;

Depending on what you want to accomplish.
Good Luck on your projects.