Mouse Look with camera behind player

Unity Engine
1

I’ve been writing this mouse look routine, but I can’t seem to get it right. It’s a first-person view and my player camera is set behind the actual player, so when the player looks around, the camera has to actually orbit around the player on the X and Y axis. When the player lets go of the mouse button, the camera should then slowly snap back to the original (0/0/0) position,

The problem is that when I move around my camera with the mouse, it also affects the Z axis for some reason, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to restrict the Z-movement and I also can’t seem to be able to get it to snap back smoothly to 0, even if I read the Euler angles. I can’t imagine I’m the only one with this problem, so I thought I’d ask for some help. Below, please find my code. Any advice would be most appreciated.

	public Transform mouseCamera;

	public float	camRotLimitX = 90f;
	public float	camRotLimitY = 60f;
	public float	camSensitivity = 4f;
	private float	snapBack = 0f;

	private float	currentAngleX = 0f;
	private float	currentAngleY = 0f;
	
	private float	lastRotationX = 0f;
	private float	lastRotationY = 0f;
	
	void MouseLook ()
	{
		if ( Input.GetButton ( "Fire2" ) ) 						// Mouse look is triggered by the right mouse button
		{
			currentAngleX += Input.GetAxis ( "Mouse X" ) * camSensitivity;
			currentAngleY -= Input.GetAxis ( "Mouse Y" ) * camSensitivity;
			
			currentAngleX = Mathf.Clamp ( currentAngleX, -camRotLimitX, camRotLimitX );
			currentAngleY = Mathf.Clamp ( currentAngleY, -camRotLimitY, camRotLimitY );
			
			mouseCamera.RotateAround ( transform.position, Vector3.up, currentAngleX - lastRotationX );
			mouseCamera.RotateAround ( transform.position, Vector3.right, currentAngleY - lastRotationY );

			lastRotationX = currentAngleX;
			lastRotationY = currentAngleY;
			snapBack = 0.0f;
		}
		else 
		{
			if ( currentAngleX != 0 )
			{
				currentAngleX = Mathf.Lerp ( currentAngleX, 0, snapBack );
			}
			
			if ( currentAngleY != 0 )
			{
				currentAngleY = Mathf.Lerp ( currentAngleY, 0, snapBack );
			}

			snapBack += Time.deltaTime;

			mouseCamera.RotateAround( transform.position, Vector3.up, currentAngleX - lastRotationX );
			mouseCamera.RotateAround( transform.position, Vector3.right, currentAngleY - lastRotationY );
			lastRotationX = currentAngleX;
			lastRotationY = currentAngleY;
		}
	}
2

I understand why the z axis is moving as he camera is orbiting your player, not sure how to fix that one.

But for the smooth snaping that would have to be done in the update or fixedupdate funtion so the snap would occur over several frames. This would be calculated in a separate function and called each frame the snaping event is true. Or if the distance from mouse look to position 0,0,0 is const, then simply use transform.position to update the cameras position over intervals in the update funtion.

On my tablet right now, so showing some code example isdifficult. Hope it provides a direction though

3

This entire function is called as part of Update(), so it is called periodically to allow for the smooth movement of the camera.

4

The key also seems to be to clamp the Z-axis movement, because if I move my mouse in a circular motion, the camera will slowly roll through the entire 360 degrees. I need to lock it down somehow so that the Z-axis is never really touched and the camera moves only along the X and Y axes.