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Grappling hook ray cast direction problems in Unity

Hey team I'm currently working on a 3rd person game where I would like to fire grappling hooks from the player to a point that is offset from the center of the camera.
I have a screen overlay canvas with Ui images for crosshairs. When the left shift is held down the crosshairs move outward from center along the x axis and return to center once shift is released, a bit like crosshair spread in games except I want to trigger the spread via the shift key. These crosshairs are meant to dictate the location the anchors of the grappling hook land, originating from the player and hitting whatever object is directly forward of the crosshairs. (imagine attack on titan ODM gear if you've seen it). I am looking for a way to ray cast from the player to the point forward of these crosshairs while they're offset from the center.
So far I have the grappling system set up and working but am having trouble with the direction parameter when I use the crosshair spread. It separates fine but where the hooks land in relation to the cross hairs are obviously out as I'm trying to use angle calculations at the moment instead of what is forward of these reticles.
I'm basically wondering if it is possible to use these screen overlay UI images to cast forward from or if there's a better way to accomplish the same thing. I have my doubts because they're screen overlay so I imagine their coordinates wont be attached to the camera as they appear.
Thanks in advance for your help.

What I would do is determine the location of the reticleson the screen, then (as Aybe suggested) use ScreenPointToRay or ViewportToRay (depending on if it's easier to get a pixel position or a fractional position of each reticle) to Physics.Raycast that ray from the camera into the scene to find where the rays collide. At this point, you have two world positions the player seems to want to shoot the hooks.:
Vector3 hookTarget1;
Vector3 hookTarget2;
So, now you actually have to fire the hooks - but as you know the hooks aren't being shot from the camera, they are being shot from the player, and they maybe offset by a bit. Let's call the originating points (which may have the same value):
Vector3 hookOrigin1;
Vector3 hookOrigin2;
So, then you can create Rays that originate from the hook origins and point at the targets:
Ray hookShot1 = new Ray(hookOrigin1, hookTarget1 - hookOrigin1);
Ray hookShot2 = new Ray(hookOrigin2, hookTarget2 - hookOrigin2);
Using these rays, you can do another Physics.Raycast if you would like, to confirm that there aren't any trees or other obstacles that are between the player and the target location - and if there are, that may be where the anchor should actually sink:
Vector3 anchorPoint1;
Vector3 anchorPoint2;
The segment between the origin of these rays and these anchor points would be appropriate for rendering the cable, calculating physics for how to move the player, as well as checking for collisions with world geometry that might cause the anchor to release.

How can I do this kind of 3D camera movement in Unity?

This is a school project. I have a big cube which is like a planet. I have a small cube that can move on every side of the cube planet. The player moves forward automatically on its local z axis and I rotate it by 90 or -90 degrees to move left or right- but the player can control it like it's an up-down-left-right movement (made a script so they don't have to rotate the cube with 2 keys). It's like a Tron game so if I press the up key, I can't press down immediately because I leave a trail so I have to press the left or right keys. I have a problem with my camera movement. The camera follows the little cube from above, but I want it to lean a little when the little cube player gets close to the edge of a side so it lets me see the other side - where I'm planning to go.
I have a script where I use the center of the cube planet and the player's center as the direction vector and multiply it with the camera-player distance.
Vector3 direction = (target.position - center.position).normalized;
transform.position = target.position + direction * distance;
Then I point my camera's forward vector to the player cube's direction. I tried two codes but none of them worked perfectly. First I tried to rotate the camera with:
transform.rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(-direction);
Shown in video. The problem with this is that since I don't tell the program the Up and Right vectors (I think), it sets them for itself to some random numbers so the camera sometimes do its own thing like it does a pirouette.
Next I tried this:
Quaternion rot = Quaternion.FromToRotation(transform.forward, -direction);
transform.Rotate(rot.eulerAngles, Space.World);
Shown in video. It's almost good but as the little cube moves, the camera starts steering slightly in the beginning and it gets worse and worse.
Do you have any ideas how can I make it work? I hope you understand what I would like to achieve. I'm trying to set the camera as to always show that when I press Up, my cube moves upward, when I press Right my cube always goes right etc. and when I reach the edge of my side the camera leans a bit towards the side I'm moving to.

Use dot product to find which orthogonal direction of your cube is closest to the camera's current up.
Vector3 closestToUp;
float greatestDot = 0f;
foreach (Vector3 dir in new Vector3[]{
target.forward, target.right, -target.forward, -target.right})
{
float curDot = Vector3.Dot(dir,transform.up);
if (curDot > greatestDot)
{
greatestDot = curDot;
closestToUp = dir;
}
}
Than, use that direction as the second parameter of Quaternion.LookRotation. This will keep its local up direction as aligned with the cube's "top" as possible given whatever new forward direction:
transform.rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(-direction, closestToUp);

How to drop a box to the mouse position?

I am trying to learn unity, and made my first own game and stucked at the beginning. The first idea was to drop a box (cube) to the mouse position. There are many videos and posts about getting the mouse position, and i tried to use them. My problem is, the mouse position i got is the camera's position, instead of the plane.
As you can see, it is kinda works, but it isn't fall to the plane.
https://prnt.sc/lmrmcl
My code:
void Update()
{
Wall();
}
void Wall()
{
if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
{
if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
{
wall = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Cube);
Rigidbody wallsRigidbody = wall.AddComponent<Rigidbody>();
wall.transform.localScale = new Vector3(0.6f, 0.6f, 0.6f);
wallsRigidbody.mass = 1f;
wallsRigidbody.angularDrag = 0.05f;
wallsRigidbody.useGravity = true;
wallsRigidbody.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeRotation;
wall.transform.position = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);
}
Debug.Log(Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition));
BoxCollider wallsCollider = wall.AddComponent<BoxCollider>();
wallsCollider.size = new Vector3(1f, 1f, 1f);
}
}
How should i change my code to get the right position?

This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I'm hoping it'll still get you where you need to go.
Prefabs are your friends! I'd highly recommend leveraging them here instead of constructing a cube directly in code.
But first, make sure everything else is set up right. Go ahead and construct a cube by hand in the Editor and make sure that when you hit Play, it falls as you expect. It should, provided it has a Rigidbody, collider, and you have gravity enabled (true by default).
If that works, drag that cube from your Hierarchy view into a folder in the Project view. This creates a prefab. You can now delete the cube from the Hierarchy view.
Update your script to have a public GameObject field, e.g.
public GameObject cubeToCreate;
Then, in the Inspector pane for whatever gameobject has that script attached, you should get a new field, "Cube To Create". Drag your prefab cube into that slot.
Lastly...update your code to wall = Instantiate(cubeToCreate). You'll still need to update the position, but you should be able to drop the rest of the initialization logic you have above, e.g. setting mass and drag.
As for the actual problem, the first thing that concerns me is how do you plan on turning a 2d mouse click into a 3d point? For the axis going "into" the screen...how should the game determine the value for that?
Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint accepts a Vector3, but you're passing it a Vector2 (Input.mousePosition, which gets converted to a z=0 Vector3), so the point is 0 units from the camera -- so in a plane that intersects with the camera.
I haven't done this, but I think you'll need to do raycasting of some sort. Maybe create an invisible 2d plane with a collider on it, and cast a physics ray from the camera, and wherever it hits that plane, that's the point where you want to create your cube. This post has a couple hints, though it's geared toward 2D. That might all be overkill, too -- if you create a new Vector3 and initialize it with your mouse position, you can set the z coordinate to whatever you want, but then your cube creation will be in terms of distance from the camera, which is not the best idea.
Hope this helps.

Unity - Camera ScreenToWorldPoint returning odd values

The main camera's output is set to a render texture, which is applied to a material, which is applied to a quad that's scaled up to 128x72. The secondary camera is set to only see what is rendered to the child quad, who has the material with the render texture on it.
However Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition) is returning values that aren't even close to the GameObject. I.E. The GameObject is instantiated at (0, 0, 0), and hovering over it shows the mouse at (307, 174). Moving the Rotating Object to the right edge of the screen will only return an x position of 64 (half of the 128px wide quad) so I'm not sure where the 300+ is coming from. Not sure if the quad/camera set up is responsible for this.
EDIT: Using a single orthographic camera, all properties the same except for using a render texture, instead of the setup I have now results in accurate ScreenToWorldPoint output.

The Input.mousePosition property will only return the x and y axis of the mouse position in pixels.
ScreenToWorldPoint requires the z axis too which Input.mousePosition doesn't provide. The z-axis value supposed to be the nearClipPlane of the camera. It will give you a position that's right in front of the camera.
Depending on the size of the 3D object you want to instantiate where mouse button is pressed, you will need to apply an offset to it to make it totally visible to the screen. For a simple cube created in Unity, an offset of 2 is fine. Anything bigger than that, you will need to increase the offset.
Below is a complete example of how to properly use ScreenToWorldPoint with Camera.nearClipPlane and an offset to instantiate a 3D object where mouse is clicked:
public GameObject prefab;
public float offset = 2f;
void Update()
{
if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
{
Camera cam = Camera.main;
Vector2 mousePos = Vector3.zero;
mousePos.x = Input.mousePosition.x;
mousePos.y = Input.mousePosition.y;
Vector3 worldPoint = cam.ScreenToWorldPoint(new Vector3(mousePos.x, mousePos.y, cam.nearClipPlane + offset));
Instantiate(prefab, worldPoint, Quaternion.identity);
}
}

You may not be calling the Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint method correctly. In particular, the z position of the screen position parameter that's passed to this method should be defined as world units from the camera. See the Unity documentation on Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint.
Instead of Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition), I think this is the correct way to call Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint:
var cameraPosition = Camera.main.transform.position;
// assuming `transform` is the transform "Virtual Screen Quad"...
float zWorldDistanceFromCamera = transform.position.z - cameraPosition.z;
var screenPoint = new Vector3(Input.mousePosition.x, Input.mousePosition.y, zWorldDistanceFromCamera);
var worldPoint = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(screenPoint);
Debug.LogFormat("mousePosition: {0} | zWorldDistanceFromCamera: {1} | worldPoint: {2}",
Input.mousePosition,
zWorldDistanceFromCamera,
worldPoint.ToString("F3"));
(If this isn't working, could you update your question or reply to this post with a comment with details showing the values that are logged at each step?)

I was just struggling with this problem and this question helped me find the answer, so thank you for posting it!
The issue has nothing to do with the z axis or how you're calling Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint. The issue is that the camera you're calling it on is rendering to a RenderTexture, and the dimensions of the RT don't match the dimensions of your game window. I wasn't able to find the implementation of the method in the reference source, but whatever it's doing is dependent on the resolution of the RenderTexture.
To test this, click the stats button in the game window to display the game window's screen size. The coordinates you get will match the ratio between that and the RenderTexture resolution.
Solutions:
Don't call this method on a camera targeting a rendertexture, either target the screen (none) or create a child camera that matches the position of the camera you need
Match the RT resolution to the screen. Obviously this may have performance implications, or cause issues if the screen size changes.
Don't use Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint. Depending on the use case, using a raycast may be simpler or more reliable.

Since using a default camera was returning the correct values, I simply added another one to detect the mouse position independent of the render texture/quad setup.

XNA Monogame Mouse Projectile Click

I am coding for a game and I have it running fine and all, but I ran into the issue of projectiles. I have no idea of how to calculate the mouse position and send a projectile over. I've looked though many stackoverflow tutorials and many youtube videos, but they are either too vague or very very complex. Could someone please explain the process? I have been coding in C# for 2 years now, so I do have background knowledge. Please Help!

Well, you don't tell what kind of game you are working on and what the projectile you want to "send over", whatever that means but here are a few pointers, maybe one will help:
#1: If you are doing a 2D game, and you want to send a projectile from some point toward the mouse cursor, then you simply get the position of the mouse by calling GetState() on your MouseState instance, and reading it's X and Y properties, then get the direction of the projectile by subtracting the location of the origin of the projectile from the mouse position. Then you can move the projectile along that line by storing the time you launched it, subtracting that every frame from the actual time to get how long it has been on its way and then adding that many times it's speed times the normalized direction to its origin coordinates.
Example:
For this I assume you have a Projectile class that has Vector2 field called origin, one called direction, one called position, a float called speed and an int called startTime and you have an instance of it with origin and speed already set. Modify as necessary for your actual code.
MouseState ms = new MouseState();
in your Update method:
ms.GetState();
projectile.direction = new Vector2(ms.X, ms.Y) - projectile.origin;
projectile.direction.Normalize();
projectile.position = projectile.origin + projectile.speed * (gameTime.TotalGameTime.TotalMilliseconds - projectile.stratTime) * projectile.direction;
And then in the Draw method you just draw the projectile to the coordinates in projectile.position.
#2: You are doing a 3D game and want to shoot a projectile originating from your camera and directed toward whatever your mouse is pointing at. You will need to generate a Ray with something like this:
private Ray getClickRay(Vector2 clickLocation, Viewport viewport, Matrix view, Matrix projection)
{
Vector3 nearPoint = viewport.Unproject(new Vector3(clickLocation.X, clickLocation.Y, 0.0f), projection, view, Matrix.Identity);
Vector3 farPoint = viewport.Unproject(new Vector3(clickLocation.X, clickLocation.Y, 1.0f), projection, view, Matrix.Identity);
Vector3 direction = farPoint - nearPoint;
direction.Normalize();
return new Ray(nearPoint, direction);
}
From there you can get the position of your projectile the same way as above, only using Vector3-s instead of Vector2-s.
#3: You want to simulate some sort of launcher and do a physical simulation on the trajectory of the projectile. Since I find this less likely than the first two I'll just describe the idea: you set a minimum and maximum rotation for your launcher along 2 axes, link each rotation to the ratio of the full width and length of your screen to the mouse position, and then use the angles and whatever other variables you have to calculate the direction and speed of the projectile at launch, then simulate physics each frame.
I hope one of these will help.