Question by Tocaro · Nov 21, 2013 at 03:09 AM · facing

Feet first on planet

So I've got a sphere functioning as a tiny planet, and I've got creatures that hop around the planet. I've got gravity implemented and I was using a LookAt(CenterOfPlanet) to make sure they always faced the planet (and therefore landed feet first), but there's two issues:

When the creature is standing, feet first, on the planets surface and the planet rotates, the objects starts to rotate as well, but in place. It still faces the planets center, but it starts to rotate in place (In relationship to the direction and speed the planet is rotating), something that looks rather odd.
I'd like to have the creature be capable of facing other objects on the surface, so it's feet would be on the ground but it would be facing towards something in particular.

Thanks for your help, any suggestions?

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meat5000 ♦ · Nov 21, 2013 at 03:12 AM 0

For 1, a child object of the planet will follow the planet rotation flawlessly.

For 2, use local z and x axis of the object

Tocaro · Nov 21, 2013 at 03:36 AM 0

Hm. Okay so that might work fine for when they're standing on the planet, but if they're parented and hopping around that means that whenever the planet rotates they'll be pulled along even though their in the air.

So maybe I could do a combo of the two... Use LookAt(CenterOfPlanet) while in the air, then disable that when landed and parent to the planet. It'll still do that weird rotate thing while in the air, but that wouldn't be all that noticeable I guess.

meat5000 ♦ · Nov 21, 2013 at 03:37 AM 0

If we jump on planet Earth, we land in the same spot, even though its spinning :)

Before we jump we are moving at the same angular velocity as the planet surface.

Tocaro · Nov 21, 2013 at 04:22 AM 0

Thing is, it's a tiny planet, a single hop can get you around the whole thing. And the hop isn't just vertical, so even taking into account that we are indeed moving at the same angular velocity as the earth, no, you aren't going to land in the same spot.

If it wasn't so tiny a planet, I'd just have it not bother with the LookAt while in the air. Speaking of, I'm still not all that happy with the whole, once it crosses a certain axis it rotates in air, it just looks odd.

So what sort of alternatives are there to using LookAt? Has anyone had this issue of an Object using LookAt rotating 180 at once it crosses an axis?

meat5000 ♦ · Nov 21, 2013 at 11:50 AM 0

It is vertical, relative to the players local axis.

$$anonymous$$ove the models locally rather than in World Space and you probably wont have an issue.