How to solve gimbal lock problem

Unity Engine
1

Hello, I’m new to Cinemachine and I ran into this gimbal lock problem where camera doesn’t smoothly rotate towards next direction but instead it rotates whole screen around to do that.

My scene currently have 3 cinemachine virtual camera which all of them follows same transform with same offset. First camera aims POV custom, which makes fps aim where player rotates freely. Other two is for cinematics(Composer), when player triggers the scene cinematic happens.

This is my current Timeline, where blends from POV custom camera to composer camera and after awhile back to POV custom camera again.
3355296--262580--upload_2018-1-15_13-8-36.png

here’s a link to captured video.

belows are camera settings 1 to 3 in order.

3355296--262585--upload_2018-1-15_13-17-12.png
3355296--262585--upload_2018-1-15_13-17-12.png351×747 31.3 KB

POV custom camera (default, player controls it)

3355296--262586--upload_2018-1-15_13-17-34.png
3355296--262586--upload_2018-1-15_13-17-34.png353×763 30 KB

Cinematic camera 1 (Composer)

3355296--262587--upload_2018-1-15_13-18-0.png
3355296--262587--upload_2018-1-15_13-18-0.png357×761 30.2 KB

Cinematic camera 2 (Composer)

Is there a solution to this problem? Or is there better way to approach without blending these cameras?

2

Normally this should blend perfectly. My instinct is to look first at POV custom. Can you replace that with ordinary POV and see if you still have the problem?

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3

Changed from POV custom to POV, same problem occurs. Even got worse…

Found out solution, camera 1 had a weird ‘Look At’ binding, it resolved when I got rid of it. I have no idea why that caused problem, but now it works! Thanks for the help :slight_smile:

4

Yes, the LookAt binding was a problem. It was misleading the system into thinking that the LookAt tarnsform was of interest, and that influences the way the blends are done. It’s a hint to the system.

However, I think there is another problem with the POV component. Does the blend always work, regardless of where the controller is? I think not. Move the controller to the other side of the sphere/cube, so that the POV has to rotate a lot to see them. Then the blends are no longer nice. This is due to a bug in the POV component, easily patched.

In CinemachinePOV.cs, change this line: curState.OrientationCorrection = curState.OrientationCorrection * rot;
to this:

            curState.RawOrientation = rot;

This fix will be included in the next version of Cinemachine.
Thanks for bringing this up!

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