how to zoom in/out on FreeCamera

[gwmaze]

Hey Babylon Community,

I'm quite new to Babylon. I worked with ThreeJS and Unity so I'm not an absolute beginner when it comes to 3D programming ...
I have searched the web like crazy but did not find something that helped me out.

I simply want to zoom in and out with mouse wheel and pinch gesture like the ArcCamera does but on a normal FreeCamera or UniversalCamera.
I managed to get the wheel events and the mouse wheel delta but i can not find out which property i have to manipulate to zoom.

I tried camera.fov since in Unity camera.fieldOfView does exactly what i need - but in babylon the view gets extremely distorted.

Can please someone give me a hint about the specific properties i have to change?

Thanks and all the best

 

 

[Wingnut]

Hi G, welcome to the forum. 

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#6FHKHC#12

That playround demo shows a freeCamera mouseWheeler... lines 18-37 do the work.

I think there is also a method... that uses a camera's .inputs... but I haven't researched that very much.

Also, I have no experience with touch gestures, except maybe the non-computer type (ahem)

https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/tree/master/src/Cameras/Inputs

That is a list of currently-available camera.inputs.  babylon.freeCameraTouchInput.ts IS in the list, but an in-code search of all playgrounds... for 'freeCameraTouchInput' is returning no hits, unfortunately.  I think the freeCamera is already touchEnabled.

console.log(camera.inputs.attached.mouse);   // that says it is.

I hope I have been helpful.  Stay tuned for more comments/ideas.

[gwmaze]

Hey Wingnut,

wow - that was quick ?

Thanks for your reply and yep - it was helpful because i now finally see how to use the BABYLON Framework to work with the mouse wheel!

But in my case repositioning the camera is not really what i want.
I have a first-person-like scene where the user can navigate via clicking waypoints on the floor.
The camera is always at the same hight (about a normal person eye hight) and can be turned in any direction.
The user should be able to zoom in and out to have a more detailed look at the Objects in the scene but the camera should always stay in place.
I built a prototype in Unity but unfortunately, Unity does not support mobile devices so I now try babylon.

In Unity camera.fieldOfView does exactly what i want - zooming without changing the camera position and without distortion.
There has to be an equivalent solution in babylon ... I hope ?

Here you can see the current demo state of my project.

http://projekte.gameworker.de/mytheresa/valentino3d/public/

- the gray boxes on the floor are prototypes of waypoints - you can click them
- the mouse control is inverted (because the customer wanted me to ? )

Thanks again and all the best

[Wingnut]

Hi G.... interesting challenge, and a beautiful scene.

I decided to make a FOV mousewheeler, with standard camera.fovmode = BABYLON.Camera.fovmode_VERTICAL_FIXED;

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#6FHKHC#14

Just goofin' around.  I want to somehow "see" the fov-caused distortion you mentioned.

Would you know how to adjust this playground (and save another version) where we could more-easily see the distortion you speak-of?

I can't see it here, but I don't have the best eyes anymore... I'm an old geez.  (60)  :)

[gwmaze]

Hey, Wingnut and all other readers,

actually camera.fov does the trick - i simply passed in way to extreme values.
If i treat fov gentle it works as expected - rooky mistake - sorry!

But as i said - your reply was helpfull anyway, so ...
Thanks again!

Now i'm working on pinch zoom - let's see how that turns out ? 

maze

[Wingnut]

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#6FHKHC#15

Oops, I had fovMode mis-capitalised in PG 14. 

Good luck... in a pinch!