Getting Degrees Camera Has Pivoted Around Character

[asherppan (asher)]

Trying to get the rotation a camera has spin around the character like this:

0 degrees:

15 degrees:

[skewercase (crossfade)]

if your goal is to get the number of degrees the camera has rotated, your best bet would be to do something like this:

get a table of desired rotations that range from 0 to 360, increment by 15

local rotations = {}
for i = 0, 360, 15 do
	table.insert(rotations, i)
end

then normalize the angle to compare it easier

function normalize(angle)
	angle %= 360
	if angle > 180 then
		angle -= 360
	end
	return angle
end

afterward, take the dot product of the camera’s right vector and the left (negative right) vector of the character’s root (camRight:Dot(mainPartOrientation)) to determine how much one vector aligns with another

then you can take this dot product and convert it to an angle (in radians)
(i’m using deg here to make it a tad bit more intuitive)

local rawAngle = math.deg(math.acos(camRight:Dot(mainPartOrientation)))
local angle = normalize(rawAngle)

then you could use the cross product of the two vectors (camRight and mainPartOrientation) to determine the relative direction of the angle

local crossProduct = camRight:Cross(mainPartOrientation)
if crossProduct.Y < 0 then
	angle = -angle
end

afterward, you can find the closest predefined rotation

for _, rotation in rotations do
	local difference = math.abs(normalize(rotation) - angle)
	if difference < minDifference then
		minDifference = difference
		closestRotation = rotation
	end
end

the full script, in case my explanation was kinda crappy

local Players = game:GetService("Players")
local RunService = game:GetService("RunService")

local player = Players.LocalPlayer
local currentCam = workspace.CurrentCamera

-- safe character retrieval
local function getCharacter()
	local character = player.Character
	return if character and character.Parent then character else player.CharacterAdded:Wait()
end

local char = getCharacter()
local mainPart = char:WaitForChild("HumanoidRootPart")

-- 15-degree rotations from 0 to 360
local rotations = {}
for i = 0, 360, 15 do
	table.insert(rotations, i)
end

-- wrap an angle within 0 to 360 degrees & convert any angle greater than 180 to its negative counterpart
function normalize(angle)
	angle %= 360
	if angle > 180 then
		angle -= 360
	end
	return angle
end

RunService.RenderStepped:Connect(function()
	local camRight = currentCam.CFrame.RightVector
	local mainPartOrientation = -(mainPart.CFrame.RightVector)

	-- calculate the angle between the camera and the main part
	local rawAngle = math.deg(math.acos(camRight:Dot(mainPartOrientation)))
	local minDifference = math.huge
	local angle = normalize(rawAngle)
	local closestRotation = nil

	-- adjust angle based on cross product's y-axis
	local crossProduct = camRight:Cross(mainPartOrientation)
	if crossProduct.Y < 0 then
		angle = -angle
	end

	for _, rotation in rotations do -- find closest predefined rotation
		local difference = math.abs(normalize(rotation) - angle)
		if difference < minDifference then
			minDifference = difference
			closestRotation = rotation
		end
	end

	-- based on the closest rotation, now you can do things
	player:SetAttribute("angle", closestRotation) -- this is an example !!
end)

good luck with ur development

[asherppan (asher)]

Thanks, I’ll try this tomorrow, 15 degrees was just an example, so you didn’t need to make the normalize function, but thank you!

[asherppan (asher)]

Your code seems to restrict the angle to a certain rotation for some reason, and then it resets back, possibly because you’re using :Dot() which I am not familiar with, but this is what I used instead, thanks though.