How can I make WASD controls relative to camera Position?

Question

So I have a camera that allows me to rotate around my player using my mouse. My character is controlled using WASD keys. This gets very confusing if lets say, I rotate my camera to the right side of my character, because then W visually makes my character move from left to right on the screen, rather than "forward". So how could I change this camera script in order to make WASD relative to its rotation?

Player script

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 
     public class testscript : MonoBehaviour {
     
      public float speed = 6.0F;
      public float jumpSpeed = 8.0F;
      public float gravity = 20.0F;
      private Vector3 moveDirection = Vector3.zero;
     
      private CharacterController controller;
     
      private void Awake()
      {
          controller = GetComponent<CharacterController>();
      }
     
      void Update()
      {
          if (controller.isGrounded)
          {
              moveDirection = new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
     
              Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(moveDirection, Vector3.up);
              if (moveDirection != Vector3.zero)
                  transform.rotation = rotation;
     
              moveDirection *= speed;
              if (Input.GetButton("Jump"))
              {
                  moveDirection.y = jumpSpeed;
              }
     
              Debug.DrawLine(transform.position, moveDirection);
     
          }
          moveDirection.y -= gravity * Time.deltaTime;
          controller.Move(moveDirection * Time.deltaTime);
      }    
 }

Camera script

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 
 [AddComponentMenu("Camera-Control/Mouse Orbit with zoom")]
 public class MouseOrbitImproved : MonoBehaviour {
 
     public Transform target;
     public float distance = 5.0f;
     public float xSpeed = 120.0f;
     public float ySpeed = 120.0f;
 
     public float yMinLimit = -20f;
     public float yMaxLimit = 80f;
 
     public float distanceMin = .5f;
     public float distanceMax = 15f;
 
     private Rigidbody rigidbody;
 
     float x = 0.0f;
     float y = 0.0f;
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start () 
     {
         Vector3 angles = transform.eulerAngles;
         x = angles.y;
         y = angles.x;
 
         rigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
 
         // Make the rigid body not change rotation
         if (rigidbody != null)
         {
             rigidbody.freezeRotation = true;
         }
     }
 
     void LateUpdate () 
     {
         if (target) 
         {
             x += Input.GetAxis("Mouse X") * xSpeed * distance * 0.02f;
             y -= Input.GetAxis("Mouse Y") * ySpeed * 0.02f;
 
             y = ClampAngle(y, yMinLimit, yMaxLimit);
 
             Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.Euler(y, x, 0);
 
             distance = Mathf.Clamp(distance - Input.GetAxis("Mouse ScrollWheel")*5, distanceMin, distanceMax);
 
             RaycastHit hit;
             if (Physics.Linecast (target.position, transform.position, out hit)) 
             {
                 distance -=  hit.distance;
             }
             Vector3 negDistance = new Vector3(0.0f, 0.0f, -distance);
             Vector3 position = rotation * negDistance + target.position;
 
             transform.rotation = rotation;
             transform.position = position;
         }
     }
 
     public static float ClampAngle(float angle, float min, float max)
     {
         if (angle < -360F)
             angle += 360F;
         if (angle > 360F)
             angle -= 360F;
         return Mathf.Clamp(angle, min, max);
     }
 }

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Zodiarc · Apr 17, 2018 at 10:38 AM

Line 23 in your player script is the problem. You have no reference on which coordinate system you calucalte the moving direction, so it will only move on the "highest" (World coordinate space). You need to move relative to the camera coordinate system and not the world coordinate system:

 Vector3 cameraRight = this.CameraAnchor.transform.right;
 Vector3 cameraForward = this.CameraAnchor.transform.forward;
 Vector3 inputVector = new Vector3(this.controls.getRightMovementAxis(), 0, this.controls.getForwardMovementAxis());
         Vector3 moveDirection = cameraForward * this.controls.getForwardMovementAxis() + cameraRight * this.controls.getRightMovementAxis();
 
         this.transform.LookAt(this.transform.position + moveDirection.normalized);
         this.transform.Translate(Vector3.forward * Mathf.Sqrt(inputVector.sqrMagnitude) * Time.deltaTime * this.MaxMovementSpeed);

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Puckle33 · Apr 19, 2018 at 12:41 AM 0

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So would I replace the "moveDirection = new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));" with the script you provided? Sorry i'm really new to coding.

Puckle33 Puckle33 · Apr 19, 2018 at 12:51 AM 0

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I would also get rid of line 38 on my player script right?

Zodiarc Puckle33 · Apr 19, 2018 at 06:41 AM 0

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Question 1: Yes. The LookAt and Translate calls can be omitted since controller.Move is called later on. Remember that you need a variable with a reference to your reference coordinate system. What I did was creating an empty which always has the same position as the player (the CameraAnchor you see in my example) and made the camera a child of this empty. That way you can move the camera around in the editor to find the most fitting camera position for your game and since the player will be moving relative to the camera anchor, moving the camera around won't screw with the calculations (and this way you can do really fancy stuff pretty easily like when the player is moving around normally the camera is orbiting him, but when an enemy is nearby the camera locks to that enemy and moves to a over the shoulder perspective). Just make sure to apply your camera rotations to the anchor instead and all will be fine.

Question 2: Calculating the direction to move towards doesn't move the player. You still need to move him manually by either using Transform.Translate (like I did), setting the new position, using controller.Move (like you did) or other ways, so you can keep it. It is possible that you need to multiply movingDirection with the character speed to move it as fast as you want (i never used CharacterController.Move before so it's a wild guess).

How can I make WASD controls relative to camera Position?

Player script

Camera script

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