JPCT - 3rd person click and drag camera

Engines, Libraries and Tools
#1

Hi there, I’m having a problem with getting the Camera class to do what I want in jpct, I’m aiming to mimic how games like WoW have it where you click and drag the camera around the player. I’ve gotten the rotation to work fine however the angle of the camera tends to rotate angles that I do not want and I end up viewing the world sideways.

Here is the snippet of code that I’m using for camera rotation:


//Get position between camera and player
			float distance = lock.distance(camera.getPosition());
			float yRotation = -(dx * .005f);
			float xRotation = -(dy * .005f);

			camera.moveCamera(Camera.CAMERA_MOVEIN, distance);
			camera.rotateCameraX(xRotation);
			camera.rotateCameraY(yRotation);
			camera.moveCamera(Camera.CAMERA_MOVEOUT, distance);

the dx and dy variables are taken directly from the Mouse.getEventDX() and Mouse.getEventDY() if you needed to know where those values where coming from here are also some screenshot to understand what us happening

I want to keep the camera upright to the player and not be able to view the world sideways

#2

Try to use something like


camera.rotateCameraAxis(camera.getXAxis(), xRotation);
camera.rotateCameraAxis(camera.getYAxis(), yRotation);

instead.

#3

That’s definitely better than my implementation. If I move the mouse perfectly side to side it looks nice along with straight up and down, however if I move the mouse sideways it starts to flip and turn in very odd directions.

Edit: What I’m noticing is that when the X rotation of the camera changes, then rotate the Y, that’s when the angle of the camera starts to get weird. Is there a way to force the Z of the camera to stay up-right?

Edit2: I’m seeing what’s going on with the camera, basically when I go to the object, rotate its yaw then zoom out as my code does the angle the angle stays locked at the same location, I need to update the yaw and angle relative to where the camera is, how is that done? A better way to put it is that when the camera moves out the angle does not update with the camera’s new translation.

Edit3: I got it to work, what was happening was that the other method was not setting the rotation matrix to its current angle/yaw so it was rotating on its original axises, calling the standard rotateX/rotateY gets that to work just fine along with declaring lookAt ever update as well.


//Get position between camera and player
			float distance = lock.distance(camera.getPosition());
			float yRotation = -(dx * .005f);
			float xRotation = -(dy * .005f);
			
			System.out.println(dy);

			camera.lookAt(lock);
			camera.moveCamera(Camera.CAMERA_MOVEIN, distance);
			camera.rotateX(xRotation);
			camera.rotateY(yRotation);
			camera.moveCamera(Camera.CAMERA_MOVEOUT, distance);