How to Make a Unity Camera Follow Players

You can access the full course here: Create Your First 3D Game in Unity

In this quick webclass, we’re going to showcase how you can quickly and easily make the Unity camera follow players. This allows you to have more dynamic gameplay that actually goes to different locations – vs. leaving everyone stuck in the same, unmoveable static top-down view.

As we delve into the process of making a Unity camera follow players, it’s worth noting that this is just one of the many skills you can master with Zenva’s Unity Game Development Mini-Degree. This comprehensive collection of courses explores all aspects of game development with Unity, including 2D and 3D games, audio and special effects, custom game assets, and more. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone looking to enhance their Unity expertise and develop cross-platform games that captivate players.

Unity Camera Follow Player Script

The simplest way to make the Unity camera follow players or any object is to set it as a child. You can click on the camera and drag it into the Player object:

Main Camera in Unity being dragged as child of Player

Now the camera is set as a child of the Player.

Main Camera as child of player in Unity

If we press play, we can see we already have what we need to make the Unity camera follow players then.

Demonstration of camera as child of player in Unity

EXCEPT, the camera not only follows our Player’s position, but it also follows its rotation. For example, if you are facing right and hit the left key, the camera is also turned 180 degrees, and this is not ideal for many games.

As such, we need to find a different method to make the Unity camera follow players.

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Creating A CameraFollow Script

Instead of relying on the editor, we’ll instead lean on C# to help us make a better system of using the Unity camera to follow players. First, we’re going to unparent the camera from the Player. (Drop it into where the blue line appears above the Player):

MainCamera being moved to top of Unity Hierarchy

And we’re going to create a new script called “CameraFollow” inside Assets/Scripts.

CameraFollow C# script in Unity Assets

We’re going to attach this script to the camera by dragging it into the Inspector.

CameraFollow script added to Main Camera in Unity

We can then double-click the script and open it up in Visual Studio. Here, we’re going to create two new variables:

public Transform target;
public Vector3 offset;

The target will be used to reference a Transform component to follow, and the offset will be used to maintain a certain distance away from the player.

Inside the Update function, we’re going to update our camera’s position so that it follows the target’s position, but with some offset so that our camera doesn’t sit inside the player.

//Update is called once per frame.
void Update()
{
   transform.position = target.position + offset;
}

Let’s hit save and return to our editor where we can now make the necessary changes for this iteration of making the Unity camera follow players.

Setting Up the Camera

In the editor, we’re going to drag in the Player into the Target slot located on our Camera Follow script component.

Player being added to Camera Follow script's Target

We’re going to set the offset as (0, 2, -3.5):

Camera with offset set in Camera Follow Script

Unity demo of new Camera Follow script

We’re also going to set the x-rotation of our camera to be 20, so we’re looking down slightly on the player.

Unity Inspector with 20 on X Rotation

Demo of Unity with adjusted X rotation

If we hit Play now, you should see that the camera is following our player, while always maintaining the offset (0, 2, -3.5) away from the player’s position.

Demo of final Camera Follow script in Unity

And that’s it! We have a very, very simple way to make the Unity camera follow players. However, keep in mind this is a bare-bones method and certainly not the only way. Different game genres have different needs, from panning cameras to orbital cameras. Still, for a starting project, the Unity camera follows players successfully now, and you can reuse this script as needed to expand on for future games.

As we explore more about Unity’s cameras, it’s worth mentioning the invaluable resource of Zenva’s Unity Game Development Mini-Degree. This comprehensive course collection not only familiarises you with Unity basics but also delves deeper into game mechanics such as building 2D and 3D games, generating procedural maps, and setting up enemy AIs – all of which could enhance your player-tracking camera game functionality. Encompassing learning far beyond this article’s topic, this Mini-Degree is an amazing trove of knowledge for any aspiring game developer.

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Unity Camera Follow Players Transcript

Welcome back everyone in this lesson, we are going to be setting up Camera Follow. And this basically means that we have our camera following our player around, so no matter where we go, we can always have our player in the center of our screen.

So here in Unity, what we want to do first of all, is figure out how we’re actually going to do this. Now, first of all, you may think we can just parent the camera to the player. So that whenever it moves, the camera moves as well. Okay well, let’s try that out and see if it works. So I’m gonna get our camera and I’m gonna drag that into the player object as a child. Okay, so the camera is now a child, and if we press play, we should be able to move our player around, right?

Well, let’s try it now. And you’ll see that when we move, our camera rotates as well with our player. And that is not what we want. We don’t want to pretty much be statically attached to our player like this, where you rotate and move with it. We only want to move with our player.

So to unparent an objects, we can select it, click and drag. And if we move it above player, you’ll see there’s this blue line that appears. Okay, we can just let go. And it is now outside of the player.

So, what we need to do is create a new script. Down here on my scripts folder, inside with project browser. I’m gonna right click create a new C# script called Camera Follow. Okay, Camera Follow right there. I’m gonna select the main camera. And I’m gonna drag this script into the Inspector to attach it as a component.

We can then double click on Camera Follow, to open it up inside of the, Visual Studio here. I’m gonna delete the start function since we don’t need, the Start function for this. We only need update and we are gonna be creating two variables. First of all, we need to give this camera a target.

Okay, what object do we want to be following? So I’m gonna to create and a new public, and then we can enter in Transform here. So a Transform component. We can be referencing a Transform component to follow, and I’m just gonna call this variable target. And also we need a another variable, a public Vector three, and this is going to be for the offset.

Now, when we have the camera following the player, we don’t want to be setting the camera’s position to be directly the exact same as the player’s. Because what that will do is make it so that the camera is inside the player. And we of course do not want that. So we need an offset, which is going to be applied to that position, so that we have maintained a certain distance away from the player.

So, down here on update. What we want to do is set our position. So we go, transform dot position, equals our targets position, plus the offset. So here we can go target dot position plus offset. Okay, and that is it. Just one line of code inside the update function. We are setting out position right here to be equal to the targets position plus the offset vector apply to that. Okay. And off of semi-colon save that script or turn to the editor.

And now what we can do is select our main camera. You’ll see down the bottom here in the Inspector, we have a target and an offset property. Target, we can drag in a transform. And offset, we can enter in a new vector, very similar to how we have up here our position, rotation and scale . So for the target, I’m gonna click and drag our player game object into the target property. So now it is referencing our player’s Transform component and fully offset.

Let’s just say the offset is zero on the X. We’ll make it one on the Y and we’ll make it something such as a negative three point five on the Z. So if we go up to our camera here and set it to zero, one, negative three point five, this is more or less what we’re going to be getting. Okay. let’s maybe also add a bit of a rotation to the camera.

So we’re looking down slightly on the player. So I’m gonna to set the X rotation here to be about 15. No, we could probably make that about 20 and I’m gonna set the Y position up to be about a two. So there we go. We can then change that down here in the offset to two. So zero to negative three point five.

If we press play now, you should see that the camera is now following our player. When we move around luxor. Okay, we can jump. We can move. And the camera is always going to maintain this offset away from the player’s position.

So there we go. That is how we can do a quick and easy, Camera Follow script inside of Unity. So thanks for watching and I’ll see you all in the next lesson.

Interested in continuing? Check out the full Create Your First 3D Game in Unity course, which is part of our Unity Game Development Mini-Degree.