Is there a way to smoothdamp a lookat?

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Right now I am working on an AI scripts and currently have the bot lookat a target once he sees it. The problem is that its done instantly. I would like for it to take a few seconds that would be the reaction time of th ai. Ive used smoothdamp and seen there is a smoothdampangle but wasnt sure how to use it for this purpose. Anyone know how I could acomplish this?

Im using a damping variable with the time.deltatime method..but im not sure of the range for the variable.. is it 0-1... 0r like 1-360? or or what? do lower numbers give you a faster turn? i suppose I could set up a test situation.. but im doing it on fast moving objects, its harder to observe.. I just wish it were here..

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2 Answers

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Using @Julien-Lynge’s answer, I came up with this:

public Transform Target;
public float RotateSmoothTime = 0.1f;
private float AngularVelocity = 0.0f;

// ...

var target_rot = Quaternion.LookRotation(Target.position - transform.position);
var delta = Quaternion.Angle(transform.rotation, target_rot);
if (delta > 0.0f)
{
    var t = Mathf.SmoothDampAngle(delta, 0.0f, ref AngularVelocity, RotateSmoothTime);
    t = 1.0f - t/delta;
    transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, target_rot, t);
}

This worked very well. Thanks!

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You can use damping with Slerp. Instead of using LookAt with the transform, work with the Transform’s rotation, which is a Quaternion. Use the method SetLookRotation - it will return a quaternion / rotation that’s you’re target - where you want to look. Then take your current rotation (transform.rotation) and this target rotation, and plug them into Slerp, and that’s where you can do smooth damping.

Thanks a lot

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Sure thing. You're in for some potentially complicated math working with quaternions, so good luck :)

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It's actually not that complicated but you only describe how to actually slerp between two rotations, how do you apply the smooth damp effect?

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You can do it a few ways. You could use a library like iTween (which offers a few different damping curves). You could do it yourself with a simple damping function, using Euler's number. You could use http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Mathf.SmoothDamp.html However you do it, you take the output of your damping function and plug that into the slerp as the last argument.

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