Determin movement direction from two vectors accouting for rotation

Questions & Answers
1

I have a character that I move with WASD and rotate direction with mouse. I’m trying to determine which direction the character is moving (ex, forward, backward, left, right) based on it’s current and previous position vectors. I tried this code:

    Vector3 direction = (gameObject.transform.position - previousPosition).normalized;

    if (direction.z == 1)
    {
        //forward
        AnimateWalk(true, false);
    }
    
    if (direction.z == -1)
    {
        //backwards
        AnimateWalk(false, true);
    }

    if (direction.z == 0)
    {
        //no forward no back
        AnimateWalk(false, false);
    }

    if (direction.x == 1)
    {
        //right
    }

    if (direction.x == -1)
    {
        //left
    }

    if (direction.x == 0)
    {
        //no left right
    }

   previousPosition = gameObject.transform.position;

It works great if I walk in a straight line but if I rotate the character the normalized value will changed based on the rotation and so I need to take the rotation into account some how.

I need something that will give me results something along the lines of:

Forward = 1
Backward = -1
No change = 0
Left = -1
Right = 1
No change = 0

I’ve tried various methods suggested on the forums and here but had no luck in producing something that will work. The main reason why I want to play the animation this way is because this is a multiplayer game with an authoritative server and instead of sending an RPC every time a new player direction animation is to be played I can have the client determine the proper animation from the gameObjects last and current position vectors.

EDIT: If it helps the character is being moved using the transform.forward and transform.right vectors.

2

as I understand it, 44° to the right would still be forward. so your bounds are the diagonals. and you’re checking in world space. that means you can just use the vector components. (pseudocode):
if Mathf.Abs(x) > Mathf.Abs(z){
if x > 0 right,else left
}
else
if z > 0 forward, else backwards

3

After many hours of searching I found the anwser to my question in another post.

You can view the solution here from Piflik as well as below: Compare movement direction to aiming direction - Questions & Answers - Unity Discussions

curAngle = Vector3.Angle((curPos - lastPos).normalized, transform.forward);
 clockwise = angleDir(transform.forward, (curPos - lastPos).normalized, Vector3.up);
 if(curAngle < 30)
     animation.CrossFade("walk_F", 0.1);
 else if(curAngle > 30 && curAngle < 90 && clockwise < 0) 
     animation.CrossFade("walk_FL", 0.1);
 else if(curAngle > 30 && curAngle < 90 && clockwise > 0) 
     animation.CrossFade("walk_FR", 0.1);
 else if(curAngle > 90 && curAngle < 150 && clockwise < 0) 
     animation.CrossFade("walk_BL", 0.1);
 else if(curAngle > 90 && curAngle < 150 && clockwise > 0) 
     animation.CrossFade("walk_BR", 0.1);
 else if(curAngle > 150) 
     animation.CrossFade("walk_B", 0.1);



 function angleDir(fwd: Vector3, targetDir: Vector3, up: Vector3) {
     var perp: Vector3 = Vector3.Cross(fwd, targetDir);
     var dir: float = Vector3.Dot(perp, up);
 
     if (dir > 0.0) {
  return 1.0;
     } else if (dir < 0.0) {
  return -1.0;
     } else {
  return 0.0;
     }
 }