How can I make my raycasts more accurate?

[martinmarmion]

Good morning!

I’ve been trying to implement a top down shooting system. It’s working well for what I imagined the prototype to be, but I’m having a problem where I’m standing still, same rotation, shooting directly at the ground, at the same point, but It sometimes generates a ray that simply makes no sense: the ray origin is far away from the nozzle, and the hit point is far away from the actual mouse pointer.

Below, I’ve attached a screenshot which should help visualize the problem a little bit better.
I’ve logged the nozzle and mouse hit point positions, and both vary despite the GameObject remaining still.

There are three classes involved:

1. Controller
2. Humanoid
3. Firearm

1 - In the controller class, I have the following code to rotate the character from mouse target

    void TargetRotateToLookPoint()
    {
        bool isManualLook = false;
        if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.F))
        {
            player.LookAt(mouseTarget.position);
            isManualLook = true;
        }
        else if (translateVector != Vector3.zero)
            player.LookTowards(translateVector);

        foreach (var layer in rigBuilder.layers)
            layer.active = isManualLook;
    }

which is called in FixedUpdate
2 - On the humanoid I have the following to rotate the transform itself

    public void LookAt(Vector3 point)
    {
        Vector3 lookDirection = (point - transform.position).normalized;
        LookTowards(lookDirection);
        if (weapon)
            weapon.transform.LookAt(point);
       
    }

    public void LookTowards(Vector3 direction)
    {
        Quaternion lookRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(direction);
        Quaternion planeLookRotation = new Quaternion(transform.rotation.x, lookRotation.y, transform.rotation.z, lookRotation.w);
        transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, planeLookRotation, turnSpeed * Time.deltaTime);
    }

3 - And finally, in the firearm class, just a simple raycast

    public void Fire()
    {
        RaycastHit hit;
        if (Physics.Raycast(Nozzle.position, transform.forward, out hit, 500f))
        {
            if (hit.collider.TryGetComponent<Humanoid>(out Humanoid humanoid))
            {
                humanoid.TakeDamage(1000);
            }
            //Humanoid hit.collider.GetComponent<Humanoid>().enabled = false;
            var rayLength = Vector3.Distance(Nozzle.position, hit.point);
            Debug.Log("NOZZLE POS: " + Nozzle.position.ToString() + "\nHIT POINT: " + hit.point.ToString());
            Debug.DrawRay(Nozzle.position, transform.forward * rayLength, Color.red, 10);
        };
    }

I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, but any help would be appreaciated.
Thanks!

[zulo3d]

You can’t mix the quaternion components like you’re doing on line 13. If you’re trying to restrict your character to only looking along a horizontal plane then you should set the y component of the look direction vector to zero.

[martinmarmion]

Thanks for the headsup. Changed my code to the following

    public void LookTowards(Vector3 direction)
    {
        direction.y = 0f;
        Quaternion lookRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(direction);
        transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, lookRotation, turnSpeed * Time.deltaTime);
    }

Looks cleaner and works just the same.
I’m still having the problem I’ve described, though

[martinmarmion]

I was attaching the gun as a child to the shoulder bone. I’ve instead attached the gun to the top level container and the problem is gone. I’m guessing it was something caused by the rotation of the bone and the rotation of the weapon towards the aim point.