Inspector camera movement

Container

Hi,

does anyone here have an idea how I can get the camera with WASD around e.g. the earth without the earth moving, but only the camera and how I can "fly" with R and F to the earth and away from the earth? I have already tried a few things, but each time came out for me inexplicable things.

Megalomaniak

You mean to make a custom controller for the viewport camera in editor? If this is doable at all it will likely involve an editor plugin rather than simply a toolscript.

Container

@Megalomaniak said: You mean to make a custom controller for the viewport camera in editor? If this is doable at all it will likely involve an editor plugin rather than simply a toolscript.

No, I mean in-game, not in the editor. How to let the cameranode move around a sphere?

Megalomaniak

Easiest might be to instead rotate the sphere, but assuming there's some kind of visible environment in the background I guess you want that to visibly change along with the angle the sphere is viewed form.

So alternatively you could move the camera around but now the sphere will seemingly move out of view. So next you could use look_at() to make the camera orient back towards the sphere. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_spatial.html?highlight=look_at#class-spatial-method-look-at

I'm assuming you already know how to translate a node in it's local space to change it's position, btw.

Container

@Megalomaniak said: Easiest might be to instead rotate the sphere, but assuming there's some kind of visible environment in the background I guess you want that to visibly change along with the angle the sphere is viewed form.

So alternatively you could move the camera around but now the sphere will seemingly move out of view. So next you could use look_at() to make the camera orient back towards the sphere. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_spatial.html?highlight=look_at#class-spatial-method-look-at

I'm assuming you already know how to translate a node in it's local space to change it's position, btw.

Actually yes, but I don't know how to move the camera round, that is always with the same distance to the earth, I only know how to change x, y and z.

cybereality

Instead of moving x/y/z. Using the keyboard to change a rotation x/y/z (not on the node but your own script variables). Then use there rotation values (basically polar coordinates) to find the x/y/z position of the camera and set it to that. You can use look_at function to orient the camera to look at the planet.

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Sphere.html

Container

How to use polar coordinates?

xyz

Easiest way is to use a Spatial node that's positioned in the dead center of the planet. Make the camera a child of this node and move it along the z axis so it's outside of the planet, looking towards the center of the planet.

Now you can rotate that spatial node around its x axis by the amount proportional to vertical input delta, and around its y axis proportionally to horizontal input delta. To move the camera closer/farther simply move it along its local z axis.

This is basically doing polar coordinates but without using math, just via node setup.