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Getting a Model to Clamp to the Camera in 3D

I'm trying to get a 3D model that I've implemented into Monogame (Xna 4.0) code to constantly be in the bottom right of the screen, it's a gun - basic pistol model, there's nothing fancy - doesn't even have textures! But I can't figure it out, I've tried some maths to get it to stay there, but the problem is that the X and Z offset I set is hard-coded so when the player rotates the camera, while the pistol rotates to face the new LookAt, the actual model doesn't move position so it goes out of sight very quickly.
It's been a long road for a pretty pointless 3D game for an A-Level (Highschool equivalent I suppose) course in computer science which I'm making in Monogame Xna to rake in those complexity marks, but I've got to the last stretch, I need to get my fbx model to sit like the player is holding it in the bottom right of the screen. Right now, if it sits in the centre of the screen, there's not much notice - however, if I increase my X or Z offset to position it where I want, when you begin to rotate your camera it falls behind the camera or goes in a massive circle around the camera which breaks immersion (despite how silly it sounds it really bugs me).
After the simple way didn't work, I tried attaching it to the BoundingBox that the current camera is using: Still left a gap, tried a BoundingSphere to see if I could get it to move around the sphere's edge and follow the player that way: No luck. Yet.
tl;dr I've tried attaching gun to BoundingBox, BoundingSphere and regular Vector Positioning to no success.
if (pausedGame == false)
{
camera.UpdateCamera(gameTime);
if (carryingWeapon)
{
weapons[weaponToCarry].SetRotationMatrix(Matrix.CreateRotationX(camera.GetCameraRotation().X), Matrix.CreateRotationY(camera.GetCameraRotation().Y));
weapons[weaponToCarry].SetPosition(camera.weaponSlot.Center + camera.GetLookAtOffSet());
//Debug.WriteLine(weapons[weaponToCarry].Position);
//Debug.WriteLine(camera.Position);
}
CheckCollision();
AIMovement();
UpdateVisitedNodes(updatedNodes);
}
that was my update for it, simple setting position and rotation of model. The 'weaponslot.Centre' is due to the fact that right now I left on using BoundingSphere so that piece of code is still in there.
else if (_state == ItemState.Dynamic)
{
foreach (var mesh in model.Meshes)
{
foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects)
{
effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true;
effect.World = Matrix.CreateScale(SCALE, SCALE, SCALE) * rotationMatrix *
Matrix.CreateTranslation(position);
effect.View = view;
effect.Projection = projection;
}
mesh.Draw();
}
}
this is my draw for the actual item, it's nothing fancy.
Like you can imagine, I want it to be locked in the bottom right of the frustum and moves it's position according to where the player is looking themselves. Right now the positioning of the item is really messed up - any conceptual help is welcome! Thanks.

What I would do is parenting the gun to the camera (it's done that way in engines like unity as well).
You would need to do that by yourself in mono (I think) - the basic principle is to first transform the gun relative to the cam and multiply with the cameras World-Matrix afterwards - this also means to have the guns position relative to the camera
gun.worldmatrix = Matrix.CreateTranslation(gun.position) * camera.world;
You now just move and rotate the camera and the gun keeps in relative position to the camera. Remember: The guns position/(rotation) has to be relative to the camera in that case.
The important thing is just the order in which you multiply the matrices (haven't tried it, hopefully I got it right above)

Set a background to the area out of camera limits (Viewport Rect) in Unity3D

I am talking about the Camera settings in Unity3D.
I'm trying to figure out if I can change (at least) the background color of the gray area in the screenshot. The limits of the camera are changed programmatically. The motivation lies in the fact that the playing area has to change dynamically based on whether a child or an adult is playing. The screen is huge around more than 83 inches. When rescaling the playing area, the area that is not drawn is gray and a bit ugly, I would like to know if you can define at least the color, or better still if possible with an image.
The screenshot you see is the screen capture in fullscreen mode, so it includes all the pixels.
After this brief explanation in words and images, let's go to the specifics of the technical details. This is how I resize the room design area:
public static void SetViewportCalibration()
{
var camera = Camera.main;
camera.pixelRect = new Rect(MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY);
}
Is it possible to set the color of that gray area outside the new Rect(MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY)?

There's two ways off the top of my head to accomplish this. Both ways use two Cameras.
The first way. Create a second Camera. The second Camera should have Depth LESS than the dynamic camera. This second, "Background" camera can then display anything you'd like, for example, a separate Skybox, a separate UI, other scene content, etc. etc.
The second way. Your dynamic camera is actually not resized dynamically. Instead, render your camera to a Target Texture. Use this texture in a material, and assign the material to a Quad mesh (most appropriate). This mesh can then be used in your scene like any other 3D object, which means not only can you position it, but scale it and even rotate it. The new camera that you added can have it's own Skybox, UI etc. etc.
I would opt for the second way. Partly personal preference, but also because it sounds like it might suit your situation better and be easier to implement. You can also implement many more effects for extra "wow".

Try to create another camera with no objects in its view and the following settings:
Clear Flags: Solid Color,
Background: Pick a color,
ViewPort Rect: X = 0, y = 0, w = 1, h = 1,
Depth: A smaller value than the other camera (Set the depth of this camera to 0 and the depth of the other camera to 1)
This camera will work as background of your screen.
I hope that I understood the question :)

c# XNA 4.0 Camera zoom and sprite resizing

Inside my project, I have a sprite being draw of a box. I have the camera zoom out when clicking a key. When I zoom out, I want my box to scale it's dimensions so it stays consistent even though the camera has zoomed out and "shrunk" it.
I have tried multiplying the object's dimensions by 10% which seems to be the viewpoint's adjustment when zooming out, but that doesn't seem to work. Now this may sound dumb, but would scaling the sprite in the draw function also change the sprite's dimensions?
Let's say the box is 64x64 pixels. I zoom out 10% and scale the sprite. Does the sprite still have the boundaries as 64x64 or is the up-scaling also changing it's dimensions?

Scaling using SpriteBatch.Draw()s scale argument will just draw the sprite smaller/bigger, i.e. a 64x64 one will appear as 7x7 pixels (the outer pixels being alpha blended if enabled). However there are no size properties on the sprite, if you have your own rectangle, position variables for the sprite SpriteBatch.Draw() of course will not change those.
An alternative is draw the sprite in 3D space then everything is scaled when you move your camera, so the sprite will appear smaller though it will still be a 64x64 sprite.
How to draw a sprite in 3D space? Here is a good tutorial http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/Csharp/Series2/Point_sprites.php. (You will need to take time to learn about using 3D viewports, camera's etc, see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb197901.aspx)/

To change sprite dimensions you need to change Rectangle parameter for SpriteBatch.Draw. To calculate zoom on rectange:
Rectangle scaledRect = new Rectangle(originalRectangle.X, originalRectangle.Y, (int)(originalRectangle.Width*zoom), (int)(originalRectangle.Height*zoom)); // where zoom default is 1.0f
When drawing use:
spriteBatch.Draw(Texture, scaledRect, Color.White);
Now I'm sorry to assume it, but without knowing why you doing what you doing - I think you doing something wrong.
You should use camera transformation to zoom out/in. It is done like that:
var transform = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-Position.X, -Position.Y, 0))* // camera position
Matrix.CreateRotationZ(_rotation)* // camera rotation, default 0
Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(Zoom, Zoom, 1))* // Zoom default 1
Matrix.CreateTranslation(
new Vector3(
Device.Viewport.Width*0.5f,
Device.Viewport.Height*0.5f, 0)); // Device from DeviceManager, center camera to given position
SpriteBatch.Begin( // SpriteBatch variable
SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, // Sprite sort mode - not related
BlendState.NonPremultiplied, // BelndState - not related
null,
null,
null,
null,
transformation); // set camera tranformation
It will change how sprites are displayed inside sprite batch, however - now you also must account for different mouse coordinates (if you using mouse input). To do that you must transform mouse position to transformed world matrix:
// mouse position, your tranformation matrix
public Vector2 ViewToWorld(Vector2 pos, Matrix transform)
{
return Vector2.Transform(pos, Matrix.Invert(transform));
}
I used the code without direct access to test it, so if something will not work - feel free to ask.
This is not answer to your question directly, if you could provide reason why you want re-size sprite when zooming instead of zooming camera - maybe I could better answer your question, also you should fallow markmnl link to understand world transformations and why you seem to need it in this situation.

Tracking Rotating Sprite

I am messing about in XNA and have run into a problem. I have a 48 * 48 sprite that I can keep track of its location in the game world by the top left corner of the sprite.
I want to be able to rotate the square and still keep track of the same point. For instance if I rotate 90degrees clockwise and the orginal X position was 200 the new X position should be 200 + 48(the size of the width of the image). Its fine for 90 degrees I am able to work that out in my head but each one in between is the problem!
I know there is probably some kind of formula to work this out.
Any help would be great! Oh the square is rotating on its center.
I'm just using spriteBatch.Draw()
spriteBatch.Draw( animations[currentAnimation].Texture,
Camera.WorldToScreen(WorldRectangle),
animations[currentAnimation].FrameRectangle,
color, rotationScale , new Vector2((float)frameHeight/2, (float)frameWidth/2), effect, TileMap.characterDepth);

If you have to keep track of a moving rotating sprite you can't use the top left corner, but its centroid. You already draw your sprite using the centroid to rotate it.
The problem is that the second parameter of your Draw call is a Rectangle, you sholud use a Vector2 position, instead.

You're building your application on top of a 3D graphics library. 3D graphics libraries are very good at solving this kind of problem! Break it down into smaller operations and let the library do the work for you.
First: it's easiest to think about these kinds of questions when you're working in model space rather than world space. In other words: you don't need to worry about where the rotating point is in absolute terms, you only need to worry about where it is relative to the untransformed model (in this case, your sprite without any rotation or translation).
So where is that? Simple:
var pt = new Vector3(-frameWidth / 2f, -frameHeight / 2f, 0f);
Your point of origin is the center of your sprite, so the center of your sprite in model space is (0, 0). This means that the top left corner of your sprite is half the width of the sprite in the negative x direction, and half the height of the sprite along the negative y direction.
Now create an object that represents the desired transformation. You can do this by creating a rotation matrix using XNA's built-in methods:
var transformation = Matrix.CreateRotationZ(MathHelper.ToRadians(90f));
Now apply the transformation to your original point:
var transformedPt = Vector3.Transform(pt, transformation);
This is still in model space, remember, so to get world coordinates you'll need to transform it into world space:
var transformedWorldX = transformedPt.X + spritePosition.X;
var transformedWorldY = transformedPt.Y + spritePosition.Y;
And there you go.

How to make scroll map in XNA (2D)?

I have a map, containing many objects in an area sized 5000*5000.
my screen size is 800*600.
how can i scroll my map, i don't want to move all my objects left and right, i want the "camera" to move, But unfortunately i didn't found any way to move it.
Thanks

I think you are looking for the transformMatrix parameter to SpriteBatch.Begin (this overload).
You say you don't want the objects to move, but you want the camera to move. But, at the lowest level, in both 2D and 3D rendering, there is no concept of a "camera". Rendering always happens in the same region - and you must use transformations to place your vertices/sprites into that region.
If you want the effect of a camera, you have to implement it by moving the entire world in the opposite direction.
Of course, you don't actually store the moved data. You just apply an offset when you render the data. Emartel's answer has you do that for each sprite. However using a matrix is cleaner, because you don't have to duplicate the code for every single Draw - you just let the GPU do it.
To finish with an example: Say you want your camera placed at (100, 200). To achieve this, pass Matrix.CreateTranslation(-100, -200, 0) to SpriteBatch.Begin.
(Performing a frustum cull yourself, as per emartel's answer, is probably a waste of time, unless your world is really huge. See this answer for an explanation of the performance considerations.)

Viewport
You start by creating your camera viewport. In the case of a 2D game it can be as easy as defining the bottom left position where you want to start rendering and expand it using your screen resolution, in your case 800x600.
Rectangle viewportRect = new Rectangle(viewportX, viewportY, screenWidth, screenHeight);
Here's an example of what your camera would look like if it was offset off 300,700 (the drawing is very approximate, it's just to give you a better idea)
Visibility Check
Now, you want to find every sprite that intersects the red square, which can be understood as your Viewport. This could be done with something similar to (this is untested code, just a sample of what it could look like)
List<GameObject> objectsToBeRendered = new List<GameObject>();
foreach(GameObject obj in allGameObjects)
{
Rectangle objectBounds = new Rectangle(obj.X, obj.Y, obj.Width, obj.Height);
if(viewportRect.IntersectsWith(objectBounds))
{
objectsToBeRendered.Add(obj);
}
}
Here's what it would look like graphically, the green sprites are the ones added to objectsToBeRendered. Adding the objects to a separate list makes it easy if you want to sort them from Back to Front before rendering them!
Rendering
Now that we found which objects were intersecting we need to figure out where on the screen the will end up.
spriteBatch.Begin();
foreach(GameObject obj in objectsToBeRendered)
{
Vector2 pos = new Vector2(obj.X - viewportX, obj.Y - viewportY);
spriteBatch.Draw(obj.GetTexture(), pos, Color.White);
}
spriteBatch.End();
As you can see, we deduce the X and Y position of the viewport to bring the world position of the object into Screen Coordinates within the viewport. This means that the small square that could be at 400, 800 in World Coordinates would be rendered at 100, 100 on the screen given the viewport we have here.
Edit:
While I agree with the change of "correct answer", keep in mind that what I posted here is still very useful when deciding which animations to process, which AIs to update, etc... letting the camera and the GPU make the work alone prevents you from knowing which objects were actually on screen!