How to make the camera look ahead of the player when he is moving

Archived Forums Questions & Answers
1

I found a nice working camera script but it doesn’t look ahead when the player is moving forward. I want it so that when I’m moving to the right it is like one or 2 units ahead so I can see where I’m going better. When I’m moving left I want it to do the same in the other direction. How would I achieve this? Here is the camera script:

public GameObject cameraTarget; // object to look at or follow
	public GameObject player; // player object for moving
	public float smoothTime = 0.1f; // time for dampen
	public bool cameraFollowX = true; // camera follows on horizontal
	public bool cameraFollowY = true; // camera follows on vertical
	public bool cameraFollowHeight = true; // camera follow CameraTarget object height
	public float cameraHeight = 2.5f; // height of camera adjustable
	public Vector2 velocity; // speed of camera movement
	private Transform thisTransform; // camera Transform
	// Use this for initialization
	void Start()
	{
		thisTransform = transform;
	}
	// Update is called once per frame
	void FixedUpdate()
	{
		if (cameraFollowX)
		{
			thisTransform.position = new Vector3(Mathf.SmoothDamp(thisTransform.position.x, cameraTarget.transform.position.x, ref velocity.x, smoothTime), thisTransform.position.y, thisTransform.position.z);
		}
		if (cameraFollowY)
		{
			// to do
		}
		if (!cameraFollowX & cameraFollowHeight)
		{
			// to do
		}
	}

2 Answers

2
2

so:

if (cameraFollowX)
         {
float offset = velocity.x * someConstant;
             thisTransform.position = new Vector3(Mathf.SmoothDamp(thisTransform.position.x + offset, cameraTarget.transform.position.x, ref velocity.x, smoothTime), thisTransform.position.y, thisTransform.position.z);

in other words, multiply the velocity by some adjusting factor that you can experiment with, and then add the result to the x position that represents the players position in the script that you found. That way the camera will position itself as if focusing ahead of the player. If the player accellerates gently, then the camera will gradually move further ahead.

3

Here is a script that I have modified from another script in the forums.
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Camera2DFollow : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float dampTime = 0.15f;
    public Transform target;
    
    private Vector3 velocity = Vector3.zero;

    void Update()
    {
        if (target)
        {
            Vector3 aheadPoint = target.position + new Vector3(target.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity.x, 0, 0);
            Vector3 point = Camera.main.WorldToViewportPoint(aheadPoint);
            Vector3 delta = aheadPoint - Camera.main.ViewportToWorldPoint(new Vector3(0.5f, 0.5f, point.z));
            Vector3 destination = transform.position + delta;
            transform.position = Vector3.SmoothDamp(transform.position, destination, ref velocity, dampTime);
        }
    }
}