jerky camera over terrain

Unity Engine
1

Hi, so I am having an issue with my camera. When I walk on uneven terrain, like up or down a hill, the camera gets a little jerky. I basically already followed the method in the smooth camera script, and that works fine for flat terrain. How Can I get the addition of the terrain height so that my camera follows that smoothly. I tried simply adding the height of the terrain, but that did not work for me. Any ideas? Thanks!

	void LateUpdate() {
//		_myTransform.position = new Vector3(target.position.x, target.position.y + height, target.position.z - walkDistance);
//		_myTransform.LookAt(target);

		if(target != null) {											//as long as we have a target, we can move the camera around them

//				_myTransform.position = new Vector3(target.position.x, target.position.y + height, target.position.z - walkDistance);
//				_myTransform.LookAt(target);
				// Calculate the current rotation angles
				//float wantedRotationAngle = target.eulerAngles.y;
				float wantedHeight = target.position.y + height;
		
				//float currentRotationAngle = _myTransform.eulerAngles.y;
				float currentHeight = _myTransform.position.y;
	
				// Damp the rotation around the y-axis
				//currentRotationAngle = Mathf.LerpAngle(currentRotationAngle, wantedRotationAngle, rotationDamping * Time.deltaTime);

				// Damp the height
				currentHeight = Mathf.Lerp(currentHeight, wantedHeight, heightDamping * Time.deltaTime);

				// Convert the angle into a rotation
				//Quaternion currentRotation = Quaternion.Euler(0, currentRotationAngle, 0);
	
				// Set the position of the camera on the x-z plane to:
				// distance meters behind the target
				_myTransform.position = target.position;
				_myTransform.position -= Vector3.forward * walkDistance;//currentRotation * Vector3.forward * walkDistance;

				// Set the height of the camera
				_myTransform.position = new Vector3(_myTransform.position.x, currentHeight + Terrain.activeTerrain.GetPosition().y, _myTransform.position.z);
	
				// Always look at the target
				_myTransform.LookAt (target);
			
		}
		else {//if we do not have a target, try to find it and assign it to the target variable
			GameObject go = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag(cameraTagName);
			
			if(go == null)
				return;
			
			target = go.transform;
		}
	}
2

Just realized that my method of getting the height coordinate of the terrain does nothing…lol.

this actually gets the current height
currentHeight = _myTransform.position.y + Terrain.activeTerrain.SampleHeight(_myTransform.position);

but makes the camera go nuts…
So…any ideas

3

lerp to the new position instead of just directly setting it?

That way the it kind of glides into it’s new position.

You can even lerp only in the y direction so it doesn’t jerk up and down (which is probably where most of the jerking comes from).

Note - one usually clamps how far from the target position the lerp is allowed to be. This way it doesn’t trail to far behind if you move very fast.

4

isnt that what I am doing in this line? Thanks for the response

currentHeight = Mathf.Lerp(currentHeight, wantedHeight, heightDamping * Time.deltaTime);

5

Didn’t see that line, your code is rather cluttered with defunct commented out lines of code.

6

Well, you are directly setting _myTransform.position.y to currentHeight + Terrain.activeTerrain.GetPosition().y. That might explain why your motion appears jerky. You should add the terrain’s height into wantedHeight prior to the interpolation.

7

Hey Brian, good point. I am going to try that when I return home. Thanks for the reply and I will let you know if it works

8

Hey hc. I am struggling with the exact same problem. I also tried a method to avoid terrain but it got jerky as well, it used collision detection to adjust the position of a game object and then tried to make a null transform fly after it with this code:

transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position, target.transform.position, smooth);

It sort of worked but got jerky.