How can I rotate and move a cylindrical rod from one side with respect to other side in unity? - unity3d

I have 3 questions here. If answer of 2nd question is yes, then i dont need answer for 1st question.
I want to rotate one end of this rod and when i rotate 2nd end. i want it to move parallel to 1st end. Right now when i rotate right end in upper direction, left end goes in lower direction and pivot remains at its position. When rod is in straight line, one end will simply rotate and when rod is already tilted, it will move one end in line with the other end.
Can i simple move one end of rod? instead of rotating it just simply move one end of rod upwards and not the entire rod?
when i use gravity on the ball it falls on the rod and take the rod down with it. if i make rod kinemetic, it wont move or rotate. i want ball to use gravity but not to drag rod with itself.

Okay: if I understand it correctly, you want to move one end of the rod up, while the other is remaining where it is, like a tennis bat?
To move only one end of the rod, while the other one remains where it is, I would suggest using a parent object.
Have a parent object (Parent_Rod), make the rod the child of the aforementioned parent.
Now, set up up, so the root of the Child_Rod, that you do not want to move is at the Parent_Rods root. So the non-using end of your rod should be at [0, 0, 0,] of the parent. Then don't rotate the rod object itself, but the parent of it. This way, the rotation will be around the transform of the parent, where one end of your rod is.
Regarding the force from collision: You should not use gravity on your rod and make the rigidbody kinematic. That way you can easily control the rotation of the parent via script, while the rod itself remains unaffected of collisions.
Hope this helps, hope I got the question correctly.

Related

Precision in onCollisionStart in flame with flutter

I'm attempting to write a bouncing ball game using flame in flutter. To detect collisions the onCollision and onCollisionStart methods are provided. What I had hoped is that onCollisionStart would give a precise location when two objects first hit each other. However, instead it gives a list of positions indicating where the two objects overlap after the first game-tick when this happens (i.e. onCollisionStart is called at the same time as onCollision, but is not called a second time if the same two objects are still colliding on the next tick).
This is illustrated in the attached picture. The collision points are marked with red dots. If the ball were moving downwards, then the ball would have hit the top of the rectangle and so should bounce upwards. However, if the ball were moving horizontally, then its first point of contact would have been the top left corner of the box, and the ball would bounce upwards and to the left.
If I want to work out correct angle that the ball should fly off, then I would need to do some clever calculations to work out the point that the ball first started hitting the other object (those calculations would depend on the precise shape of the other object). Is there some way to work out the point at which the two objects first started colliding? Thanks
What you usually need for this is the normal of the collision, but unfortunately we don't have that for the collision detection system yet.
We do have it in the raytracing system though, so what you could do is send out a ray and see how it will bounce and then just bounce the ball in the same way.
If you don't want to use raytracing I suggest that you calculate the direction of the ball, which you might already have, but if you don't you can just store the last position and subtract it from the current position.
After that you need to find the normals of the edges where the intersection points are.
Let's say the ball direction vector is v, and the two normal vectors are n1 and n2.
Calculate the dot product (this is build in to the vector_math library) of the ball direction vector and each of the normal vectors:
dot1 = v.dot(n1)
dot2 = v.dot(n2)
Compare the results of the dot products:
If dot1 > 0, n1 is facing the ball.
If dot2 > 0, n2 is facing the ball.
After that you can use v.reflect(nx) to get the direction where your ball should be going (where nx is the normal facing the ball).
Hopefully we'll have this built-in to Flame soon!

How do I apply rotations to parent child using Rigidbody?

I have a finger object. It is just three cubes representing the finger parts.
The 2nd cube is the child of the 1st one. And the 3rd cube is the child of the 2nd one.
This is the heirarchy: Cube1 -> Cube2 -> Cube3
My goal is to apply a rotation angle to the first cube and let the other cubes do the same locally.
Example: Apply 30 degrees Z rotation to the first cube, 30 degrees Z rotation to the 2nd cube, and also the 3rd one.
This will make a finger that look like this:
(Forgive me if it doesn't look like a finger)
In every Update() frame, I will change the angle (it's just one number) and it will rotate every cube for me.
My question is:
How do I make all these cubes collide properly with other objects?
I tried putting the Rigidbody on all of them and set isKinematic=false because I want to transform them myself. But I still cannot use transform.rotation to update my rotation because it will miss the collision with a ball very easily (especially the tip of the finger because it moves faster than other parts). Continuous detection doesn't help.
So I tried using rigidbody.MoveRotation() and rigidbody.MovePosition() instead, which is a pain because they need absolute values. They worked but the animation is so jumpy when I change the angle quickly.
I'm guessing that the animation is jumpy because there are many Rigidbodies or because the physics engine cannot interpolate the position of each box properly when I use MoveRotation() and MovePosition().
I need to use MovePosition() also because when I use only child.MoveRotation(transform.parent.rotation * originalChildLocalRotation * Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, angle)), the position doesn't move relative to the parent. So I have to compute child.MovePosition(parent.TransformPoint(originalLocalPositionOfTheChild)) every frame too.

Unity3D angle between vectors/directions on specific axis

I have two directions and i am trying to calculate the angle on a specific axis. The object from which the directions are derived is not a static object so i'm struggling to get my head round the maths to work out what i need to do.
FYI, I have the start and end points that i have used to calculate the directions if they are needed.
Here's a diagram to show what i am looking for:
The above image is from a top-down view in unity and it shows the angle i want.
The problem can be seen from the above image, which is that the directions are not on the same height so i can't use the vector3.angle function as it won't give me the correct angle value.
In essence i want to know how much would i have to rotate the red line to the left (top view) so that it would line up with the blue (top-view).
The reason i need this is as i am trying to find a way of getting the side-to-side angles of fingers from my leap motion sensor.
This a generic version of my other question:
Leap Motion - Angle of proximal bone to metacarpal (side to side movement)
It will provide more specific information as to the problem if you need it and it has more specific screenshots.
**UPDATE:
After re-reading my question i can see it wasn't particularly clear so here i will hopefully make it clearer. I am trying to calculate the angle of a finger from the leap motion tracking data. Specifically the angle of the finger relative to the metacarpal bone (bone is back of hand). An easy way to demonstrate what i mean would be for you to move your index finger side-to-side (i.e. towards your thumb and then far away from your thumb).
I have put two diagrams below to hopefully illustrate this.
The blue line follows the metacarpal bone which your finger would line up with in a resting position. What i want to calculate is the angle between the blue and red lines (marked with a green line). I am unable to use Vector3.Angle as this value also takes into account the bending of the finger. I need someway of 'flattening' the finger direction out, thus essentially ignoring the bending and just looking at the side to side angle. The second diagram will hopefully show what i mean.
In this diagram:
The blue line represents the actual direction of the finger (taken from the proximal bone - knuckle to first joint)
The green line represents the metacarpal bone direction (the direction to compare to)
The red line represents what i would like to 'convert' the blue line to, whilst keeping it's side to side angle (as seen in the first hand diagram).
It is also worth mentioning that i can't just always look at the x and z axis as this hand will be moving at rotating.
I hope this helps clear things up and truly appreciate the help received thus far.
If I understand your problem correctly, you need to project your two vectors onto a plane. The vectors might not be in that plane currently (your "bent finger" problem) and thus you need to "project" them onto the plane (think of a tree casting a shadow onto the ground; the tree is the vector and the shadow is the projection onto the "plane" of the ground).
Luckily Unity3D provides a method for projection (though the math is not that hard). Vector3.ProjectOnPlane https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3.ProjectOnPlane.html
Vector3 a = ...;
Vector3 b = ...;
Vector3 planeNormal = ...;
Vector3 projectionA = Vector3.ProjectOnPlane(a, planeNormal);
Vector3 projectionB = Vector3.ProjectOnPlane(b, planeNormal);
float angle = Vector3.Angle(projectionA, projectionB);
What is unclear in your problem description is what plane you need to project onto? The horizontal plane? If so planeNormal is simply the vertical. But if it is in reference to some other transform, you will need to define that first.

SpriteKit move node with physics rather than updating position

My main character moves by touching and holding him and then moving your finger left or right to move the character. To do this I just simply update the node's x position (walks left and right on a flat surface) in touchesMoved() with the x position of the touch location, and apply an animation depending on the direction he's moving.
I want to kind of take this to the next level and accomplish the same effect, but using physics, so that when I'm done moving him and release my finger, he may slide a little bit in the direction he was moving given the speed I was moving him at, if that makes sense. Does anyone know how I can accomplish this effect?
Would I have to do as I'm currently doing and update the position as it moves, but also apply a force/impulse at the same time? Kind of confused on how to approach this
Moving the physics body via force, impulse, or velocity will automatically update the player position.
So you will have to play around with the correct way to accomplish your goal. But based on this, what I would suggest is replace your .position code with .physicsBody!.velocity code in your touchesMoved. Then, on your touchesEnded, you can apply a bit of an impulse to give the player that little bit of an "on ice" effect to keep them going a tad.
You will need to experiment with how much velocity you want to get the character to move at the correct speed, and then you will need to play with the impulse figures as well to get it just right.
This could get a bit tricky though, in touchesMoved... because at some point you will want to reset the velocity to 0 (so they stop moving when your finger stops).
To do that, you will need to to use the .previousLocation from your touch object, and compare the distance of X moved. if the distance X moved is >0 (or some deadzone threshold) then apply the velocity; if the deltaX is 0, then set the velocity to 0.
This may actually be more complicated than just using .position to move the character, then having the character slide a bit with physics on touchesEnded.
You will have to play with it to get it right.

Need Unity character controller to make sharp 90 degree turns and not slide when turning

I'm using the first person controller for my characters movement. On a left arrow keypress, I'd like the character to instantly rotate 90 degrees and keep moving forward. Currently, when I hit the arrow key, the character makes the sharp 90 degree turn, but the forward momentum the character previously had takes a second to wear off so the character ends up sliding in the direction he was previously moving a short bit.
The closest example I can think of to visually explain what I'm trying to do is how the character turns sharp in Temple Run. How my game is currently working, if I had the character on a ledge make a sharp left turn, he'd likely keep the original momentum and slide off the edge right after he turns.
Since my character is running on the x/z axis, I'm wondering if there would just be some way to maybe swap the directional velocity/momentum? The speed the character had on the x axis would instantly be switched to the z when it turns and the other would be set to zero. I'm obviously open to any solution that accomplishes what I'm looking for.
I dug into the CharacterMotor class in the first person controller, but have yet to find what part I can tweak to accomplish this.
I'd greatly appreciate any help.
Thank you.
You can try to stop the velocity of the Rigidbody before turning.
this.rigidbody.velocity = Vector3.zero;
this.rigidbody.angularVelocity = Vector3.zero;
If you want the object to continue like it did, you can try playing around with it by saving the current velocity in a variable, setting it to 0, rotate it and then putting back the old velocity (still forward).
If it works with global vectors (so from the point of view of the world, not the object), then you can try negativing the velocity, actually causing it to go 'backwards'. I can't test it for now but either way I think you need to set the velocity to zero first before turning the character.