Smooth out character movement?

Question

Hi everyone,

I've done a bunch of searching for an answer, and can't seem to find anything that has helped. In a nutshell, my character's movement is jagged/jittery and I'm trying to smooth it out. However, there is a slight wrinkle compared to other answers I've researched: the character is currently being moved in 2 ways: 1) with a transform.Translate using a speed variable in the local z direction, and 2) when the user presses a button, I am calling rigidbody.AddForce in the y direction (resulting in a jump). Both of these forms of movement are occurring in the Update function in my character controller script. The character is a prefab, instantiated at run-time. The character moves smoothly in the z direction, but when it jumps or falls in the y direction the movement appears jagged and not smooth (sort of like a sawtooth, up/forward/up/forward/up/forward really fast... appears to be each frame from my guess).

At first, I thought the issue was my camera follow script, which uses a Vector3.Lerp to follow the character. However, when I disable the camera follow script so the camera doesn't move, the character's movement still appears jittery/jagged when moving up or down (same as when the camera follow script is enabled).

Any ideas how to fix? I was thinking of using a Lerp to move the character, but unsure how to determine what my target position would be. Maybe there's a better way. I've also tried using interpolate/extrapolate on the character's rigidbody, but this did not change anything.

-pete

Answer 1

Answer by Warren933 · Aug 07, 2015 at 12:05 PM

Why dont you add the camera as a child to the player, then freeze the undesired rotation to allow it to face only the direction you want it to?

Add comment · Share

Answer 2

Answer by anubhavsd · Apr 30, 2015 at 06:40 PM

Try FixedUpdate instead of update and sync movement accordingly.

Add comment · Share

Answer 3

Answer by JayFitz91 · Apr 30, 2015 at 06:48 PM

Try using this, It's what I use for forward character movement, you should also post your code in the future so we can see what you're working with

 transform.Translate(Vector3.forward * speed * Time.fixedDeltaTime, Space.Self);

Add comment · Show 2 · Share

petediddy · Apr 30, 2015 at 07:36 PM 0

Share

Ok, so I have moved the transform.Translate to FixedUpdate, as well as the rb.AddForce. The code for player movement is below. However, now ins$$anonymous$$d of the jagged sawtooth movement, it now appears that the player is lurching forward as it moves (camera movement script is disabled). Any more ideas I can try?

 void FixedUpdate()
     {
         transform.Translate (0.0f, 0.0f, zSpeed / 50, Space.Self);
 
         if (jumpInputReceived == true) {
             rb.AddForce (0.0f, jumpYVelocity, 0.0f, Force$$anonymous$$ode.VelocityChange);
             jumpInputReceived = false;
         }
     }

JayFitz91 · Apr 30, 2015 at 09:28 PM 1

Share

This code will move your character forward in the direction he is facing, just make your camera a child of your character.

I have just tested this myself and everything works, movement in all directions and jumping, and everything runs smoothly.

There is a reference to this script in the unity documentation here

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 
 [RequireComponent(typeof(CharacterController))]
 public class movement : $$anonymous$$onoBehaviour 
 {
 
     public float speed = 6.0F;
     public float jumpSpeed = 8.0F;
     public float gravity = 20.0F;
     public float rotateSpeed = 6;
     private Vector3 moveDirection = Vector3.zero;
 
     CharacterController controller;
 
     void Start()
     {
         controller = GetComponent<CharacterController>();
     }
     void Update()
     {
 
         if (controller.isGrounded)
         {
             moveDirection = new Vector3(0,0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
             moveDirection = transform.TransformDirection(moveDirection);
             moveDirection *= speed;
 
             transform.Rotate(0, Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") * rotateSpeed, 0);
 
             if (Input.GetButton("Jump"))
                 moveDirection.y = jumpSpeed;
 
         }
         moveDirection.y -= gravity * Time.deltaTime;
         controller.$$anonymous$$ove(moveDirection * Time.deltaTime);
     }
 }

Answer 4

Answer by petediddy · May 01, 2015 at 04:07 AM

Thanks JayFitz91 ! That code has made the character movement really smooth now. Unfortunately, when I turn on the camera follow script, it still looks jittery. I tried making the camera a child of the player, but I don't want the camera to rotate like the player does, so I have used the below script on the camera to help it follow the player, but there is still some jitter. Any help? My camera follow script code is below:

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 
 public class CameraController : MonoBehaviour {
     
     public float smoothing = 1.0f;
     public Transform target;
 
     private Vector3 offset;
 
     void Start()
     {
         //Assign offset for camera
         offset = transform.position - target.transform.position;
     }
 
     void LateUpdate()
     {
         //If target is still valid, it means the player has not been destroyed yet, so move camera
         if (target != null) 
         {
             Vector3 targetCamPos = target.transform.position + offset;
             transform.position = Vector3.Lerp (transform.position, targetCamPos, smoothing);
         }
     }
 
 }

Add comment · Show 1 · Share

B19g_A5s_B411s · Aug 11, 2015 at 03:09 PM 0

Share

Have you tried moving the camera script into FixedUpdate() Camera movement, sway, etc. is usually jerky for me until i put it in fixed update.

Smooth out character movement?

4 Replies

Your answer

Follow this Question

Related Questions