Calculate Focal Point in "Rotate Around" Mode

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Calculate Focal Point in "Rotate Around" Mode

heiser

Is there an easy way to get or calculate the position of the focal point when in camera perspective "Rotate Around" mode?

For example, the user may use two fingers to translate the workspace and the focal point would have changed; I'd like to be able to know where that spot is at any given time. Thanks!

Anthony

heiser you can only get the current focus point on the groud which is the property FinalOffset. You can’t precalculate that position based on potential inputs

heiser

Thanks, that worked.

Anthony

heiser MoveCameraTo is the way to go, you can pass the offset position, the rotation and a distance. you only work with the focus position on the floor, not with the camera position that is always calculated.
The RotateHead mode is only working for the experimental "free camera" mode btw. The purpose of Touch Camera is to have a top down camera basically.

heiser

So how would I use MoveCameraTo and specify the offset, rotation and distance to do what I need? Basically, I want to put the camera at a position and use RotateHead to spin in place and give the user a 360 view of their surroundings. I'm not sure how distance etc plays a part in configuring that. When I set to RotateHead in the scene, it works great (ie., allows me to spin around in place to get 360 view), I just need to move the camera from where it is to a different location.

Anthony

heiser there is no method for that atm but you can try setting the FinalPosition property or disable the camera scripts while you change the camera transform position, then re enable them.

heiser

FinalPosition is only a getter (without making changes to orig code), and I attempted the second suggestion of disabling scripts, changing camera transform position and then re-enabling them--didn't seem to work.

What would it take to code a method such as RepositionCamera() that would effectively move the position of the actual camera (not its focal point) to a specified Vector3? Thanks Anthony!

Anthony

heiser Sorry for the late reply.

Can you try adding this to your CameraBase.cs?

    /// <summary>
    /// Moves the Camera transform position to a new position, in 1 frame
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="targetCamPos"></param>
    public void RelocateCameraInstant(Vector3 targetCamPos)
    {
        finalPosition = targetCamPos;
        finalOffset = CalculateOffset(finalPosition, finalRotation);
        finalDistance = CalculateDistance(finalPosition, finalRotation);
       
        ApplyToCamera();
    }

Or if you want a more complex one that clamps the camera in boundaries:

    /// <summary>
    /// Moves the Camera transform position to a new position, in 1 frame
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="targetCamPos"></param>
    public void RelocateCameraInstant(Vector3 targetCamPos)
    {
        finalPosition = targetCamPos;
        finalOffset = CalculateOffset(finalPosition, finalRotation);
        finalOffset = ClampInCameraBoundaries(finalOffset);
        finalDistance = CalculateDistance(finalPosition, finalRotation);
        finalPosition = CalculatePosition(finalOffset, finalRotation, finalDistance);

        ApplyToCamera();
    }

heiser

Hi Anthony,

Those worked great, thanks!

I just needed to make one little adjustment to it, and been having some trouble figuring out how to implement it within the TouchCameraPro libs....

Suppose the perspective camera is in Rotate Around mode, looking down at a 45 degree angle. When I execute RelocateCameraInstant and put it into Rotate Head mode, it repositions the camera to the focal point, which is great. But the angle after the camera was relocated is still at the 45 degrees (which makes sense), but I need it to now be looking in the same direction but parallel to the floor, not at the floor at 45 degrees. I attempted several mods to adapt this behavior into the method:

   `public void RelocateCameraInstant(Vector3 targetCamPos, Quaternion targetRotation)
    {
        finalRotation = targetRotation;

        //Vector3 euler = FinalRotation.eulerAngles;
        //Vector3 yawOnly = new Vector3(0, euler.y, 0);
        //finalRotation = Quaternion.Euler(yawOnly);

        finalPosition = targetCamPos;
        finalOffset = CalculateOffset(finalPosition, finalRotation);
        finalDistance = CalculateDistance(finalPosition, finalRotation);

        //finalRotation = targetRotation;

        ApplyToCamera();
    }`

The idea was to pass a Quaternion that contained the same direction as the current rotation, only parallel to the ground. But this has not worked in the few different ways that I tried. Is there a problem with the code, or do you think there is a problem with the Quaternion I am passing in? If the former, please let me know the adjustments I should make. If the latter, how would I then derive the quaternion of the existing rotation but be parallel to the ground and not looking at the ground?

Thank you!

Anthony

Hi!
Which camera mode are you using?
The RotateHead mode is only to be used with the experimental "free camera" mode, all other modes are meant to look at the floor, so having the camera parallel won't work. Have you checked the Free Camera demos?

heiser

When I am in RotateHead mode, I am able to use touch controls to bring the camera line of site parallel with the ground, so it should work. Perhaps I am not explaining it well, I will attach an image that will helpfully better explain.

Visual Explanation

Anthony

heiser sorry for the late reply, there is a lot going on.
I understanf what you want to so now. Just leave the camera rotation as is. While moving the position.

Have you tried assigning the finalRotation variable inside RelocateCamera?

Just before applytocamera()

Add finalRotation=transform.rotation

If doesnt work I can try on my side to make it work, but again it’s not something I support since it’s not meant to look out of the floor.

Maybe what you should do is using Cinemachine with the virtual cameras. To switch between touch camera’s top down view and your object FPS view.

heiser

Hi Anthony,

Yes, I tried that but unfortunately it did not work. Please read the comments in the code below where I added some notes. Thanks!!

    `public void RelocateCameraInstant(Vector3 targetCamPos, Quaternion targetRotation)
    {
        finalPosition = targetCamPos;
        finalOffset = CalculateOffset(finalPosition, finalRotation);
        finalDistance = CalculateDistance(finalPosition, finalRotation);

        // The camera ends up pointing in the correct direction, we just want to modify the pitch.
        // So instead of looking down at the ground at the same angle the camera had before the call
        // to RelocateCameraInstant, we want the view to be straight out; IOW, not pitched up at 
        // the sky, not pitched down at the ground, but straight out.
        //
        // To make this universal, I modified the function to accept a targetRotation, so the
        // function not only relocated the camera to a new position, but also adjusts its rotation
        // to the correct value.
        //
        // I have tried to set the final finalRotation to many different values before ApplyToCamera, including the
        // passed-in target rotation, but it doesn't seem to alter anything. Perhaps the value I 
        // set it to is overriden by some calc in the tool code? I also tried setting finalRotation at the very beginning
        // of the function.

        //finalRotation = targetRotation; 
        finalRotation = transform.rotation;

        ApplyToCamera();
    }

Anthony

Hi!
I don't think it's the right approach as TouchCamera is not meant to be a POV camera, there is indeed calculation in the Update loop that takes control of the position/rotation depending on the floor.

The right approach for what you want to do is simply to use virtual cameras. Cinemachine is really meant for it. I went ahead and made a demo scene for you using Cinemachine, that smoothly switches between the top down view camera and POV camera inside moving cubes on the floor. I also updated the manual to explain how it works.
I pushed the update on the store it should be available in 2 days top.

Hope that will work for you!
Anthony

heiser

Great, thanks so much for doing this! I'll check it out

heiser

Hi Anthony

I upgraded from TouchCameraPro 3.0.6 to 3.1.0 and some things have stopped working. I can zoom in and out (using the mouse wheel), and switch between persp and ortho just fine, but I cannot move/translate the space, the camera is fixed and no longer moves as if those touches aren't registering. I also deleted the TouchCamera prefabs and reimported to be sure. I will continue to investigate, but does this sound like an issue you've come across before?

Thanks!
Chris

heiser

To add on to my last post...I can see the coordinates update under the Fingers section of the TouchCameraInputs section, so I know its detecting the touch movement...just doesn't seem to make its way to the camera. I also made sure to delete the older files before importing the package. Thanks

Anthony

heiser sorry to hear about this issue. Can you check that the event system in your scene does not have any error displayed?
Can you also open any of the demo scene to check if you encounter the same problem?

We could schedule a quick debug call with team viewer if you want to me to have a closer look, let me know.

heiser

I reverted back to 3.0.6, but I kept the updated project, so if I get some extra time I will dive back in and look at the event system etc.

The good news is that I followed your demo and successfully applied Cinemachine to my app that is on 3.0.6 and it is working great. Thanks!

Anthony

Glad to hear that! 😉