How can I smoothly interpolate between different height and radius values?

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello everyone,

I’m currently developing a prototype where the player becomes bigger (the physical scale increases) after a certain event occurs. I’m using a third-person freelook camera, and I’ve also made it so that the height and radius of each rig become larger with the player, making a sort of “zoom out” effect. The problem is that this change happens instantly and not smoothly. This is what my code looks like:

// Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        CalculateForward();
        RotatePlayerToInput();
        AdjustCameraDistance();
    }

And this is the function responsible for scaling the heights and radii of each rig:

void AdjustCameraDistance() {
        if (!radiusUpdated) {
            for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
                // When the player gets bigger, multiply the heights and radii of the freelook cam.
                // This will make a "zoom out" effect.
                freelook.m_Orbits[i].m_Height *= cameraDistanceMultiplier;
                freelook.m_Orbits[i].m_Radius *= cameraDistanceMultiplier;
            }
            radiusUpdated = true;
        }
    }

I tried using Mathf.Lerp when assigning the new height and radius values, but it didn’t have any effect. For example, freelook.m_Orbits[i].m_Height = Mathf.Lerp(freelook.m_Orbits[i].m_Height, freelook.m_Orbits[i].m_Height * cameraDistanceMultiplier, smoothTime * Time.deltaTime); This didn’t do anything.
Do you guys have any ideas on how I can get this to work?

2

You’re not using Lerp correctly. The last parameter must be from 0…1. Try using SmoothDamp instead. Note that you must call this over multiple frames, until the target radius is reached.

1 Like
3

Yep, I asked a similar question about lerping an object’s scale in another thread and successfully got it to work using a coroutine. Thank you!