v.0.8 Beta

[ramokz]

Important

This beta is intended as a pre-release build to allow the community to give feedback on the upcoming version before it goes live for everyone.
The main area of feedback interest is about the Phantom Camera Noise feature (see below).

Note

The version number in plugin.cfg is purposely set to v0.7.9.
This is to allow for upgrading to v0.8 from the Beta release using the addon's updater.

🚨 Breaking Changes

• append_look_at_targets_array used to take a Array[NodePath] as a parameter
  • Parameter now only accepts type Array[Node3D]

⚠️ Deprecated Functions & Properties

• erase_look_at_targets_member is now deprecated
  • Use erase_look_at_targets instead.

✨ New Features

Phantom Camera Noise

A long requested feature, camera noise, also known as camera shake, is available for PCam2Ds and PCam3Ds, able to affect both the rotation and position of the PCam.

Phantom Camera Noise Resource

Named PhantomCameraNoiseResource, is a new resource type with a 2D and 3D variant. It defines all the variables for the noise such as intensity, rotational / position limits and randomness seed. The noise is calculated using a perlin noise pattern.

Both 2D and 3D Noise Resources can apply changes to position and rotation; however, it's recommended to avoid rotational noise in 3D scenes to avoid geometry clipping issues.

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Phantom Camera Noise Emitter

Named PhantomCameraNoiseEmitter, is a new node type with a 2D and 3D variant for their respective scenes. Its primary use case is to trigger noise at a given moment, by calling its .emit() method, for either a specified duration or a continous loop. It can be previewed in the editor by toggling the Preview property in the inspector.

Each emitter uses a Noise Resource to define its noise pattern and only affects the PCams in the matching Noise Emitter Layers. That is to say, in order for the emitter to work both the emitter and the individual PCam node needs to have at least one matching Noise Layer

Quick Guide

There are 2 ways to apply noise to a Camera2D/3D with this system:

1. Supply a Noise Resource to the Noise property in a given PCam directly. Doing so will make the noise run persistently without pause on that specific PCam. Note: This will only run after a tween has been completed.
2. Add a Noise Emitter (PhantomCameraNoiseEmitter node) to the scene, assign a Noise Resource and trigger it at any time by calling its emit() function — again, it can be previewed in the viewfinder by toggling the Preview button. The Emitter can be placed anywhere in the scene tree. Note: This will impact the Camera2D/3D both when following and during a tween to a PCam if it has a matching Noise Layer.

Using External Noise Values

If the user wants to supply their own noise values, either from third-party libraries or using their scripts, then that can be achieved by calling emit_noise() from a PCam2D/3D by supplying a Transform2D or Transform3D respectively.

Examples Scenes

• 2D - 2d_noise_example_scene.tscn
• 3D - 3d_noise_example_scene.tscn

⬆️ Improvements

• TileMapLayer Support for Limit Node
  • Thanks @Jack-023 for the PR (Update PhantomCamera2D to be able to use new TileMapLayer nodes as a limit target. #378)
• Simplified Follow (2D / 3D) and Look At (3D) logic in the tick thread
• Added dead_zone_reached signal, is emitted whenever the target touches the edge of the dead zone
• Improved the behaviour of 2D Framed Follow. Should now no longer change vertical camera movement when only the horizontal dead zones are reached and vice versa
  • Thanks @lafitteque for the PR (Camera 2D Framed issue #372 #373)

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved a crash that would occur when freeing a parent of follow_target, follow_targets (for group follow) or look_at_target and look_at_targets (group look at) (Prevent crash when freeing target parent #381)
  • Thanks @TranquilMarmot for the report (Freeing a parent of a node that's being followed causes a crash #374)
• Resolved error spam when changing 2D scene
  • Thanks @Baba-Yagan for the PR (Update viewfinder.gd #376)
• Resolved error spam when changing 3D scene
• Resolved an issue with getting an error spam when having an empty or a valid target not in the first array index when using Follow Group or Look At Group

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This discussion was created from the release v.0.8 Beta.

[MigasEu]

Hello!
I was checking the beta to solve the jitter issue I had on 0.7, which it fixes, but I had to make a small change for it to work for me, which was not have the third person camera go the the root, but keep it on the same parent.
That's because I have a reference to the phantom camera to change the fov later.

_follow_spring_arm.margin = margin
_follow_spring_arm.add_excluded_object(follow_target)
#get_tree().root.add_child.call_deferred(_follow_spring_arm) (OLD)
get_parent().add_child.call_deferred(_follow_spring_arm)
reparent.call_deferred(_follow_spring_arm)

Is there a specific reason for this to change to the root, since the spring arm is still set as top level, anyway?

Thanks!

[ramokz]

The change was mainly just a cosmetic one so that the spring_arm would exist in the top level of the scene tree. But you're right that it has no practical effect due to the top_level property being set to true further above.

Haven't noticed any changes with this particular update myself, but am happy to shift it back to the get_parent() method if you're experiencing undesired side effects from the get_tree() change.

[MigasEu]

That was the only issue I had. An option to choose between the 2 options would also work.
It just makes it a lot more difficult to manage it at an individually scene instance, like I was before.

[ramokz]

Done! 560f337

[ramokz]

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it

[MigasEu]

Thank you for changing it and for the add-on in general! 🙏