I want to shoot a raycast straight down and get the steepness of the ground I'm standing on

Unity Engine
1

How would I convert the normal of a surface into a single float value that is the steepness of the ground?

Basically I want my controller to go into a “slide” state if I’m standing on a surface over 45 degrees.

I’ve looked around and am coming up blank.

I’ll keep looking, but I could really use a tip.

Thanks in advance.

2

Try Vector3.Angle:

float steepness = Vector3.Angle(hit.normal, Vector3.up);
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3

Having not done this myself, and being garbage at maths, I believe a combination of the two would work?

So I suppose you could compare Vector3.up to the normal of a ray cast hit.

Edit: beaten to the punch

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4

Thanks y’all!

5

Just check the y of the returned hit normal. It’s going to range from 1.0 (flat ground) down to zero the steeper the ground is.

It so just happens that the normal y is the cosine of the angle between the normal and the up vector, so you can convert it to he actual angle by passing it to Mathf.Acos().

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