I’m thinking of ways to make a chase camera that will follow the player smoothly. Putting the camera object inside the player object fixes the camera in relation to the player, which creates some jerky movements.
I was thinking of setting in the camera’s (or the player’s) update script, a portion which will always attempt to move to an imaginary point behind the player at a certain speed, but I’m not sure how well that will work in various edge cases without cumbersome scripts.
What are some methods I can use instead, or is this the “right thing to do”?
Have you taken a look at the camera scripts included with Unity? Go to Assets > Import Package and look for Scripts and Character Controllers - check out the cameras there.
Unity developers have put together many different kinds of cameras, which you can see on the forums. I’d be very surprised if there isn’t something there that gets you 90% toward what you want to accomplish. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to.
To answer your question: yes, this is how most of the ‘smooth follow’ camera scripts work. They smoothly move behind the player and point towards a target (typically the player head or body). You should look into Lerp and Slerp (under Mathf) to start.