Get direction of part from player

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#1

I’m trying to get the direction of a part from the player. So basically it works kind of like the player is the origin and I want to get the direction of the position of that part from this “origin”. I don’t want to use CFrames because I would need to construct a new one every single time I want to know the direction. Note: I’m checking for rotation multiple times per renderstep so it’s very important that it doesn’t perform many calculations.

This is how I currently get the direction but it’s not very efficient in the slightest.
local Direction = CFrame.lookat(PlayerPosition, PartPosition).LookVector

I want to know if there is any way with math to get the same result using just vectors. I’m not sure how much better performance will be if I don’t use CFrames but I still want to try.

#2

There isn’t much a performance usage from this alone. CFrames tend to take up a very minimal amount of data for most usage cases anyways. Optimization would most likely rely on your end based on how you use this CFrame information.

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#3

I have a slight problem though. I’m using custom tables for my vectors in my script so I would need to convert them into Roblox’s vector3s in order to preform CFrame calculations on them so I’m constructing extra Vector3s just to be able to calculate the direction.

#4

If you just want the pure Vector3 lookVector without constructing CFrames, then you can use this method.

local direction : Vector3 = (position2 - position1).Unit

When using this method however, you must always subtract the second position by the first position, otherwise you’d get the opposite directional value. Hope this helps! :smile:

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#5

Is position2 the player or the part in your code?

#6

In your case, position2 should be your Part’s position and position1 should be your Player’s position.

#7

I think, it’s where :VectorToWorldSpace() should be used.

while true do
    local vector = HumanoidRootPart.Position
    local pos = vector + HumanoidRootPart.CFrame:VectorToWorldSpace(Vector3.new(4,0,0))

    part.CFrame = CFrame.new(pos, HumanoidRootPart.CFrame.lookVector)

    task.wait()
end
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