I’m using Blender 2.73 on Linux Mint (though I have a dual boot on Windows 7, and the behavior I will describe is identical there). I’m reading a book to get familiar with the game engine - Blender Game Engine: Beginner’s Guid, by Victor Kuller Bacone. I’ve gotten to a part where it describes how to make a “game view” camera, in which the camera that will be the point of view of the player is positioned, and then set up to track the player (in a side-scrolling manner, as it happens).
The description is to add an always sensor, and controller, and edit object actuator, to the camera, of course. In the edit object actuator, I’m supposed to change the edit object setting to “track to,” and select the player (a whale in this case) as the object to be tracked. I connected the bricks, and when I press P in the appropriate view, I just see the camera outline and a gray void…not the whale…
Come to think of it, I notice that I can press P and manipulate the whale and all is good, and it just does it from wherever you are in the 3D view, not from either camera…but alas, I’m confused.
And forgive my ignorance, but I’m not sure I understand why that worked. What are those 2 parameters actually defining? I’m not sure what it means by “track axis” and “up axis,” but if they were messed up, I thought I would see sideways motion or something turned on its ear, instead of just a gray blank.
Then you will see the local axis of the camera (when you select it). In the lower left corner you see the scene reference (global) and what colors is mapped to what coordinate
You will notify that the camera is looking against the blue axis (against = -1). The camera is top along the green axis (along = +1). You need to setup the TrackToActuator in a way that the axes matches what you want. Otherwise the camera will point in a complete different direction. showing you something else. The default setting is not sufficient for cameras.
Ohhh :yes: I see now. We have to specify because maybe we want the view upside down, on the other side, etc…and this function does not detect the local axes of the camera…and any other orientation had my camera pointing at the gray void in the opposite direction just like I imagined, but I didn’t know it. Jeesh, that was definitely need-to-know…need to speak to the author of this book…
