How to get a Spatial to look at mouse position

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How to get a Spatial to look at mouse position

danjo

Hi, I'm working on a player controller similar to the one used in the game "Alien Shooter". I got the movement working quite well but I can't figure out how to get the rotation right, so that the character is facing towards the mouse. This is the closest I could get so far:

onready var body = get_node(&quot;body&quot;) func _ready(): set_process_input(true) func input(ie): if ie.type == InputEvent.MOUSE_MOTION: if last_position == null: last_position = ie.pos var delta = ie.pos - last_position last_position = ie.pos body.rotate_y(-delta.x * 0.01)

 My node tree looks like: 

 - KinematicBody &nbsp; - Camera &nbsp; - Body 

The script is attached to KinematicBody. I read a lot about vectors and trigonometry and tried to adapt a third-person-controller-demo, but I just don't get it right. <img alt="" height="20"> Hope someone can give me a nudge in the right direction!?

del

You could use the [tt]look_at()[/tt] function. It takes a target vector, where you can put in the mouse position (from [tt]get_viewport().get_mouse_pos()[/tt]) and a vector which defines the up direction.[b]edit:[/b] I just tested that. the object moves with the mouse, but not very accurate. :-X I should test this before posting next time.

danjo

[quote]I just tested that. the object moves with the mouse, but not very accurate. :-X I should test this before posting next time.[/quote]How did you turn the Vector2 from get_mouse_pos() into a Vector3 that can be passed to look_at?I tried to do something like [code]var mouse_pos = Camera.get_viewport().get_mouse_pos()body.look_at(Vector3(mouse_pos.x, 1, mouse_pos.y), Vector3(0,1,0))[/code]and got pretty weired results.I think that is because a mouse position of (0,0) is the top left corner of the screen, but (0,1,0) is the center of the local space of the Spatial that I want to rotate. Maybe there is a way to transform the "point on screen" to "point in local space"!?

del

I did the same thing except I used a 0 for y. I think you're right with the mouse position on the screen. That is probably useless, unless you can get the zero position of the screen to the player object.To be honest, I don't know much about mouse interaction in 3d, but there should be an easy way to do something with look_at, i think. You should take a look at the gui-in-3d demo. I think there is the answer for this problem. The 3d space of the area node is converted to 2d space.

danjo

It' works but I'm not sure if I did it the you had in mind:I added a Area to the KinematicBody and made the CollisionShape (added to Area), slightly bigger than the size of the viewport.My node tree now looks like[code]- KinematicBody (script attached)  - Camera  - Body  - Area[/code]The script:[code]extends KinematicBodyonready var body = get_node("body")func _on_area_input_event(camera, event, click_pos, click_normal, shape_idx):    if event.type == InputEvent.MOUSE_MOTION: click_pos.y = 1 body.look_at(click_pos, Vector3(0,1,0))[/code]

del

Nice, if it works!  :D I couldn't really get your code to work for me, but I've played a little with the navigation mesh demo and found an easy solution. I'll try to reconstruct that and upload it.

danjo

[quote author=del link=topic=15427.msg15890#msg15890 date=1461353025]Nice, if it works!  :D I couldn't really get your code to work for me[/quote] I put together a minimal project, it should just work out of the box:http://pub.atze.libra.uberspace.de/mouse_pos_in_3d.zip[quote]but I've played a little with the navigation mesh demo and found an easy solution. I'll try to reconstruct that and upload it.[/quote]I would really like to see that.Thank you very much for your help.

del

Nice work! It works really good!I've had some trouble with making a the nav mesh, but i think I've got it now. will try to make a demo on the weekend.

del

So here is my [url=https://github.com/delstuff/Demos-Prototypes/archive/master.zip]demo[/url].Basically I parented a Navigation node (with a navmesh) to the Camera (which follows the player) and the player looks at the position, where a ray (cast by the mouse motion) hits the navmesh (the code for this is in the navi.gd).But it seems that somehow the navmesh doesn't follow the player yet. It works only if you stay on the ground plane.With this method it should also be possible to aim at points that are on a higher or lower position then the player.

danjo

Thanks for putting this together. I'm not sure if I'll make use of it somehow. It seems way too much code and nodes for a simple task like this.Also I didn't notice any issues with the "put-the-player-in-a-large-Area-that-covers-whole-screen-solution" so far so I'll stick with it for now and try to get some useful results with GridMap but that's another topic.

RandomNumber4

func _fixed_process(delta): var body = get_node("body") var m = get_viewport().get_mouse_pos() var s = get_viewport().get_rect().size var body_y = body.get_global_transform().origin.y var center = (m-s/2) body.look_at(Vector3(center.x,body_y,center.y),Vector3(0,1,0)) This is the easiest way i could think of. In total, over the code I spent five hours. Programming is painful. And here I created an example.