Free Camera with a mesh in Front

[Hagop]

Hi all

 

I have a free camera which has a mesh which in front of it which is 70 cm wide (x) and 110 cm length (z) with it's pivot point at the its center. Now I want this mesh to be constantly in front of my free camera when the camera is moving. The problem starts when I start to rotate the camera. I want the mesh to be in the center of the screen (in the direction of the camera) and at a fixed distance from the camera. Is that possible? Does it involve complicated math calculations? Would a followcamera do the job?

cart.babylon

[JohnK]

Have you tried parenting the mesh to the camera, its probably worth an attempt.

[Dad72]

Why not use an arcRotateCamera. You can with this camera be in orbit around a mesh with a given distance.

[iiceman]

@JohnKs parenting suggestion seems pretty solid: http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#P1YTR#0

[Hagop]

iiceman: Thanks, parenting solved my problem. I found out that after parenting the position of the parented mesh is relative to the parent camera and not absolute. If I have an ellipsoid on the mesh, should that be defined as relative to the parent camera? Is there a way of tracing the positions of an ellipsoid or seeing it visually?

[iiceman]

I assume you are referring to this: https://doc.babylonjs.com/tutorials/cameras,_mesh_collisions_and_gravity -> 4 - Object vs. object collision ... right?

I think the position is always relative to the mesh, because you set it as a property of the mesh.

There was a short discussion about it that I remember: 

...but with no real solution. I know that offset behaves strangely. What I did was just try different value and see what fits best. Maybe somebody else has a better idea. Would be great if it could be visualized somehow! (Maybe with @jeromes ribbon from the above link?)