Look At Direction appears to have some odd results

[mweyna]

So I noticed after updating to the latest playmaker that my FSMs that rely on Smooth Look At Direction don't seem to be properly pointing to their assigned objects, but rather have an offset of somewhere between 20/25 degrees, and are inconsistent if the object is closer or futher (even in the other two axis haven't changed). Anyone else seeing an issue here?

[Alex Chouls]

The Smooth Look At Direction hasn't changed recently, but maybe you downloaded a version from the forums that hasn't been integrated into the main distribution yet...? The update would have overwritten any local changes to the action...

[mweyna]

Definitely not. Within my scene I have the latest versions of A*, ArrayMaker, and Playmaker. Yet for some reason the action seems non-functional. I'd be happy to email the project to you if necessary.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Can you try on a simple scene, with a cube looking at another one. Once you master this, you can then apply it in  more complicated cases. With this kind of setup, it's usually ( even when you know how to work it out...) something you missed out in the set up that makes it behaving weird, in that case, I'll always start with the most minimal setup I can come up with and build up from there.

If you still have issues, let us know, I can make a small test scene to show it works.


bye,

 Jean

[mweyna]

Hey Jean,

So that's the odd thing to me, I did the solo scene thing, worked without issue. However, when I applied it to my complex scene in the EXACT same manner using the Smooth Look At Direction directly above the FollowPath action, it didn't work. I'd be happy to email you a scene if you think it would be useful to see what the root of this could be.

- Ian

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 ok, pm me

bye,

 Jean

[mweyna]

Email sent.

[mweyna]

Any updates?

[mweyna]

So still having this issue. I created a blank scene, ensured everything was updated and I get the following results (the middle cube is my target, the cube on the left is using a standard look at, and the cube on the right is using a Smooth Look At Direction).



On start of the scene it looks like it's facing but slightly off (when the cube is near 0 or 360 the look at direction seems much more accurate)



You see here the Smooth LookAt Cube (SLA CUBE) rotates to face, but then gains another 45 degrees or so when the target cube is next to him.



Depending on the distance of the target object from the cube, the rotate will change, even if the angle doesn't. So if the target cube is right next to the object, instead of being rotated 90 degrees it will be rotated about 135 degrees (looks like it's gaining 45 from somewhere). If you pull the target out on the same sideway axis, it will eventually get far enough away that the SLA will have the cube properly face the target cube (although in my test scene you have to pull him damn near off camera)

Any thoughts to the odd behaviors?

[Lane]

I haven't used the action before, so I gave it a whirl.... I had no clue what it was doing, not what I was expecting.

Working example, perhaps?

[mweyna]

A test scene is fairly simple to create, for my last post I simply created two cube objects, named one "Target" and then created a FSM on the second cube with a single Get Position of the "Target" and Smooth Look At Direction on it. From my understanding (and maybe Jean can prove a more through answer), it's basically a lookat with a controllable "forward" axis.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Yes, if you could share that simple repro project that would be good ( the project you sent me I can't really make sense of what is actually going wrong unfortunatly)

bye,

 Jean

[mweyna]

www.ianweyna.com/test/ForJean.rar

There ya guys go, the simple test scene.

[Lane]

Link requires a password and login.

[mweyna]

Guess since I was signed into the server already didnt prompt me, here is a public link, great catch! -

http://www.filedropper.com/forjean