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COMMUNITY QUESTION

How to accurately get where a Character's head is looking?

Asked 495 views1 answers

I need a system for my game where the player is in first person but they can't control their camera and instead it just follows their head. I couldn't find any camera types that let me do that, so I scripted my own system.

My system tweens the camera to the head's position every frame by using RenderStepped. Everything works fine apart from the second CFrame argument, the one where I have to put in where the camera should be looking.

CFrame = CFrame.new(char.Head.CFrame.Position, char.Head.CFrame.lookVector)

The first argument works great and as expected, but the second argument makes the camera constantly look at (0, 0, 0), and when I print out the lookVector of the head, it prints out seemingly random numbers that decrease as I get closer to (0, 0, 0).

I'm not sure if I'm understanding lookVector correctly or if I'm doing it completely wrong, but some guidance would be appreciated.

Anonymous

8 comments

1

is it on the client or server?

Anonymous#
1

You could use raycasting

Anonymous#
0

It's on the client because the camera doesn't exist on the server so it would just error.

Anonymous#
0

I'll look into ray casting as a last resort but I want to see if there is a way to do it without it first.

Anonymous#
1

It doesn't notify you when I post additional comments to my answer, so I'm putting a comment here so you see

Anonymous#
0

I did see, it was just really late so I didn't reply.

Anonymous#
0

Just letting you know there's new replies

Anonymous#
0

@thecelestialcube I added a new reply to your answer

Anonymous#

1 answer

I think the problem is that you're only using the lookVector for the camera to focus on. To my knowledge, lookVector is a unit vector, which means that all vector3 values x,y,z are between 0 and 1 with a magnitude of 1. Since the CFrame lookAt position is only at the lookVector, it automatically starts at the origin, and your camera ends up looking towards the origin.

To fix this I think you can just add the character's head position to the lookVector.

CFrame = CFrame.new(char.Head.CFrame.Position, char.Head.CFrame.Position + char.Head.CFrame.lookVector)

Not sure if this works but hopefully it helped :)

Update:

--This is a localscript in startgui
local player = game.Players.LocalPlayer
local char = player.Character
local camera = game.Workspace.CurrentCamera

while true do
	if char then
		local head = char:WaitForChild("Head")
		camera.CFrame = CFrame.new(head.CFrame.Position, head.CFrame.Position + head.CFrame.lookVector)
	end
	
	wait(0.05)
end

I also put a folder in starter character scripts called animate which removes the animations, and this stopped the spinning.

AnonymousEdited Permalink

12 comments

0

I tried this and all it does it make the camera start slowly rotating to the left, then it gets faster and then it turns into an absolute mess.

Anonymous#
1

Ok, I think I found the problem. Roblox character have a natural idling animation to the head, but it's so small that we normally don't notice it. However, it impacts the lookvector enough that it starts slowly rotating. The head turns to the left and the right after a certain amount of time, and that causes the insane mess of the lookvector.

Anonymous#
0

You can add a folder to startercharacterscripts called animate to remove the animation, but it removes all animations, including walking, jumping, etc.

Anonymous#
0

I think there are ways you can remove the idling animation by itself, but idk how to do that.

Anonymous#
0

Ah, I see. I think a better solution would just be to use the HumanoidRootPart instead and just add a stud or two onto all the Y co-ordinates. I'll see if that works better.

Anonymous#
0

I tested that and it still has the spinning, even though it takes longer to kick in. I tried removing animations completely from the character and running the script but it still violently spins, so I don't think it's the roblox animations.

Anonymous#
0

Really? I made a test version of your script in studio and it worked fine for me without the animations.

Anonymous#
0

If you want I could post my test script here

Anonymous#
0

I'd appreciate that

Anonymous#
0

@thecelestialcube

Anonymous#
0

Sorry about not being online for a while, I've updated my answer with my test script.

Anonymous#
0

Sorry, I've not been on for a while. I figured out that when I run the script while in third person, it runs fine, but if I run it while in first person (my game is first person only) the camera rotates to the left as it did with my script. I also found out that the animations don't affect this at all.

Anonymous#

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