UIText Inverted When Looking At Camera

Questions & Answers
1

I have a very simple script:

void Update()
{
	if(camera == null)
	{
		camera = Camera.main;
	}
	transform.LookAt(camera.transform);
}

Its meant to make a UI element always look at the camera. I created a worldspace text, and I added this script to it.

It looks normal in the scene view before I hit play, but when I run the game, the text is inverted. It does look at the camera but its look at it with a 330* rotation which makes the text inverted!?

41572-facing.png

The only way I can get it to look normal is if I set the scale value of the x to be -x. Doing this ‘fixes’ the problem but Im curious why its wrong in the first place.

Do you know why my ui text is always inverted when attempting to face the camera?

2

Like a guard who’s been paid not to notice a robbery you just need to look in the other direction ;¬)

transform.rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(transform.position - camera.transform.position);

That should work but let me know if not.

3

Just for note when you want a UI element to face the same direction as a given camera its better to say

transform.rotation = camera.rotation

If you set it to ‘look at’ the camera its going to look at the camera’s pivot point and depending on your canvas distance from camera and how far from center screen the element is rendering that will be off slightly. Also its unnessisary and takes more processing than simply copying the cameras world rotation though neglagably so.

So the question is do you want your element to ‘face’ the camera pivot or do you want it to face toward the same direction the camera is seeing.