Rotate Child Object

Unity Engine
1

Hi all,

I’m having trouble manipulating a child object’s rotation from its parent object’s script. I found a few posts regarding this issue but I still don’t seem to be able to get it working correctly. I’ve writing the code in several ways but none seem to be working; here is my latest iteration:

 Quaternion rotatex;
void Awake()
    {
        rotatex = GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().rotation;
        rotatex.x = 30;
    }

This is part of a script attached to a parent object “Player” which has a child object with a transform and sprite image. I’m trying to change the rotation of that sprite without effecting the rotation of the parent object.
Thanks!

2

Probably better to provide an example using Euler Angles:

Vector3 rotatex;
void Awake()
    {
        rotatex = GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().rotation.eulerAngles;
        rotatex = new Vector3 (30, 0, 0);
    }
3

Vector3 is not a reference type so you need to assign a new value to rotatex and then assign the child’s rotation to rotatex.

Edit: or you can skip rotatex and just do

GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().rotation.eulerAngles=new Vector3(0f,30f,0f);

or whatever.

4

When I use the line of code you provided I get an error CS1612:
“Cannot modify the return value of ‘Transform.rotation’ because it is not a variable”

So in that case I then tried to set a new variable for “GetComponentInChildren.rotation.eulerAngles”, then setting that new variable equal to the value of rotatex, which I had already set to “30f, 0f, 0f”. This did not work:

Vector3 rotatex;
Vector3 rot;
void Awake()
    {
        rotatex = new Vector3(30f, 0f, 0f);
        rot = GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().rotation.eulerAngles;
        rot = rotatex;
    }

I’m not sure what the issue is when you say “Vector3 is not a reference type” so I tried setting the variable “rot” as a Transform. This also returns the same CS1612 error:

Vector3 rotatex;
Transform rot;
void Awake()
    {
        rotatex = new Vector3(30f, 0f, 0f);
        rot = GetComponentInChildren<Transform>();
        rot.rotation.eulerAngles = rotatex;
    }
5

Oh, try just GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().eulerAngles instead of GetComponentInChildren<Transform>().rotation.eulerAngles

6

Thanks! It’s working now. I’m kind of curious to know why the values in the inspector aren’t changing, though.

7

Wait, no, false celebration. The parent is rotating, not the child. That’s why I didn’t see it in the inspector. Why is the parent rotating?