How to make a Video Game in Unity - CAMERA FOLLOW (E04) Video Lecture | Build a Game: Unity Tutorial (English) - Game Development

in this video we'll have a look at
making our camera follow the movement of
a player not really much to say about
that let's just jump into it so as with
everything else in game development
making the camera follow the player can
be done in multiple ways the first and
most obvious one is probably just
parenting the camera to the player unity
allows us to nest game objects that
means that we can take our camera here
select it and drag it under our player
we have now parented our main camera to
our player and the main camera is now a
child of that player this means that
whenever we go and move our player the
camera is going to move with him however
the problem with this is that if we go
ahead and rotate our player the camera
also rotates with them and that's going
to look very weird when we collide with
something and the cube starts spinning
then the camera is going to spin with it
and everything is going to be confusing
so what we do instead is we take our
camera and unparent it and we make it
follow only the position of a player
using a script let's go and hit add
component we'll call it something like
follow player select C sharp and hit
create an ad let's double click it to
burn up in visual studio and let's clean
up the script a bit so let's delete the
two using tags up here and it's also
delete the starred method not just like
when we wanted to move our player where
we wanted to move him a tiny bit each
frame we also want to have our camera
snap to the position of our player each
frame so we'll put our code inside of
the update method however in order to
set our cameras position to that of the
player we need a reference to the player
the easiest way to do this is by making
a variable that stores the reference to
our player so when we create a variable
we write public and so far we've only
looked at the basic datatypes stuff like
float integer and string that stores
numbers and text but variables can
actually also store way more complicated
stuff if we go ahead and write transform
here we can basically get a link to a
player with information about his
position rotation and scale
remember the component responsible with
these things are indeed called a
transform so that's what we're getting a
reference to then of course we need to
name it something but we'll just name it
player that's closed up with a semicolon
and if we just try and hit save now and
head back into unity we see that an
empty slot called player now appears all
we need to do now to make this play a
variable point to our specific player is
to take the player and drag him into
that slot now every time we write player
in our code it refers to that object to
test this we can go inside of our update
and we can try displaying the position
of a player in
consul to do that rewrite debug log to
write a message to the console inside of
the parenthesis we then write player dot
position and we close it off with a
semicolon
now every frame we should display a
message in the console with the position
of a player let's save that at back into
unity and hit play and if we go and
select our console we can now see that
position updating if we select our
player the two numbers should correspond
so we can see here that our player is
currently falling and so his y-value is
rapidly decreasing and it does the same
thing in the console we can also see
that he's moving a bit forward on the Z
again he's also moving forward in the
console so now that we have this link
between our script and the player we can
take the position of a player and feed
it to the camera let's stop playing head
back into visual studio and instead of
writing the position of our player
we'll go transform and whenever we write
this with a non capital T it refers to
the transform of our current object that
means the object that this script is
sitting on it also says so here the
transform attached to this game object
so by writing transform and then dot
position we're referring to the position
of our camera because our follow player
script is sitting on that object and
just like we were able to display a
position we can also set it equal to
something else so now we could move our
camera anywhere in the world but we want
to move it to a very specific place and
that's the position of a player so we'll
set it equal to player dot position and
again we'll close this off with the
semicolon so now our cameras position
this game object's position is going to
be set equal to the player's position
every frame so let's save that head back
into unity and technically our code
doesn't have any errors but there is a
main problem with this let's try zooming
out in the scene view so we can see
what's going on and hitting play we can
see that indeed our camera is following
the player but it's following the center
of our player and that means that right
when we start the game our main camera
snaps to be inside the player object you
can see that the effect here is that
we're getting kind of a first-person
view of course this might be something
that you want for your game but in our
case I think it would be better if we
move our camera a bit back from the
player and a tiny bit up to do that
we'll create another variable so again
we'll write public and I'm going to
introduce you to another data type this
one is called vector 3 and the vector 3
is actually really really simple all
this does is store three numbers of
float stories one number with
places a vector3 stores three floats and
that makes it really easy to use when it
comes to position and data because we
have an X a Y and a Z so if we go ahead
and name this one offset save it and go
into unity we should now be able to
specify an offset on the XY and the
value so in our case we wanted to remain
centered on the X so we'll leave that at
zero but we do want it to lift it a bit
on the Y here so we'll set that to
something like 1 and we definitely also
want to pull it back so we'll set the Z
here to something like negative 5 so now
that we have this offset on the
different axis all we need to do is add
it on to a player's position so to do
that we'll go in here and say player dot
position and then plus offset and we're
very used to seeing the plus here being
used between two numbers but unless you
have experience with college-level math
you probably haven't seen it between two
vectors how do we add three numbers on
two other three numbers it's kind of
weird if you want to learn more about
what's going on here I have a video on
vectors that you should definitely check
out basically what's happening is we're
taking the x position of a player which
is currently 0 and we're adding 0 onto
that so that's still 0 they were taking
the Y which is 1 point 1 6 in this case
and we're adding 1 onto that and then
finally on our Z this is currently 0 as
well and we're adding negative 5 on to
that so that's negative 5 on the Z and
we keep doing that as the player moves
forward so in this case our X would
still be 0 iy would be 1 point 1 6 plus
1 which is 2 point 1 6 and a Z would be
this number minus 5 which is equal to 1
point 6 3 so make sure you save your
script and hit play and our camera
should now follow our player with the
knifes offset position and this is much
better than parenting because if we tilt
off the ground here you can see the cube
rotating but the camera staying in place
that was pretty much it for this video
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