How to make a rigidbody rotate towards an object using physics

Questions & Answers
1

So the basics of this is I am trying to make a space ship simulator so I am using physics with no friction or gravity. I am trying to set up some AI to allow ships to travel from 1 point to another. I can rotate my ship, but I am trying to figure out how to make it slow down automatically by apply counter rotational forces so that it will stop and point directly at a target.

If you can help me understand this, or point me to some good sources or some well commented code so I can figure it out it would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:
Ok, so I feel stupid now that I have it working. I knew I was over complicating the process. Basically all I needed to do was to find the angle, apply a thrust, keep track of how long I am firing the thrust for, when I reach halfway start applying an equal but opposite force for the same amount of time. Now to mess around and get forward movement working as well with it using the same priciples. Anyways here is my code now (though i’ll need to update it for more than 1 direction of rotation):

#pragma strict

var waypoint:Transform;

var engineThrust:float;


var counterTimer:float;

var startTurn:boolean;
var counterThrust:boolean;

var angle:float;
var startAngle:float;

function Start () 
{

}

function FixedUpdate () 
{
	var targetDir = waypoint.transform.position - transform.position;
	var forward = transform.forward;
	var localTarget = transform.InverseTransformPoint(waypoint.transform.position);
		 
	angle = Mathf.Atan2(localTarget.x, localTarget.z) * Mathf.Rad2Deg;
		 
	var eulerAngleVelocity : Vector3 = Vector3 (0, angle, 0);
	var deltaRotation : Quaternion = Quaternion.Euler(eulerAngleVelocity * Time.deltaTime );

	if(Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
	{
		startAngle=angle;
		startTurn=true;
	}
	if(startTurn==true)
	{
		rigidbody.AddRelativeTorque(Vector3(0,engineThrust*Time.fixedDeltaTime,0));
		counterTimer+=1*Time.deltaTime;
	}
	if(angle<=(startAngle/2))
	{
		startTurn=false;
		counterThrust=true;
	}
	if(counterThrust==true)
	{
		
		if(counterTimer>0)
		{
			rigidbody.AddRelativeTorque(Vector3(0,-engineThrust*Time.fixedDeltaTime,0));
		} else {
			counterThrust = false;
			counterTimer = 0;
		}
		counterTimer-=1*Time.deltaTime;	
	}
}
2

here’s a simple sample project,

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11203897/SampleRigidbodyRotate.zip

I cobbled the script from these links:

just open the scene, hit play and drag the sphere around, and the cube should rotate to look at it… I think this is basically what you want?

I will go back and comment the code, though it is a short script… I’ll leave a comment here when it’s cleaned up for a better example!

(for now, here’s the ugly version of the script):

var velocity : int = 100;
var sphere : GameObject;
var angle : float;

function FixedUpdate () {
   
    var targetDir = sphere.transform.position - transform.position;
    var forward = transform.forward;
    var localTarget = transform.InverseTransformPoint(sphere.transform.position);
    
    angle = Mathf.Atan2(localTarget.x, localTarget.z) * Mathf.Rad2Deg;

    var eulerAngleVelocity : Vector3 = Vector3 (0, angle, 0);
    var deltaRotation : Quaternion = Quaternion.Euler(eulerAngleVelocity * Time.deltaTime );
    rigidbody.MoveRotation(rigidbody.rotation * deltaRotation);
}