Text Stays Horizontal

[Aaron Pozzer]

Dan has the answers even when he doesnt have the answers!

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

[Aaron Pozzer]

spoke too soon… this doesnt quite work. at least, doesnt work when applied to the zRot channel to keep the text lined up to screen horizontal.

[Dan Ebberts]

I’m not sure this works in all cases, but give it a try:

C = thisComp.layer(“Camera 1”);
v = C.toWorldVec([1,0,0]);
radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(v[1],v[0]))

Dan

[Aaron Pozzer]

yes! thats the one! if i had to be super nit picky, the value the expression returns is a BIT off… only by a few degrees. im guessing this is probably just a result of the x and y rotation adding a bit of perspective or something that is not being accounted for in the expression. but its 100% better than having to do it by hand 🙂

thanks dan.

edit: ya i think thats the case because as the camera moves to a more head-on angle, that few degrees becomes less and less.

[Aaron Pozzer]

after a bit of fiddling, it seems that its the yRot on the camera that gives the slightly off results. when the camera is down, close to the map/ground, and rotated to be looking towards the horizon, the more oblique the angle, the more off the returned result.

im not sure if there is a proper way to correct for this in the script, but i did this…

C = thisComp.layer("TRGT: Goal");
v = C.toWorldVec([1,0,0]);
rot = radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(v[1],v[0]))

rot -(thisComp.layer("TRGT: Goal").transform.yRotation/2)

(the camera is animated with sure target, so i changed the c from looking at the camera, to looking at the target. doesnt seem to make a differnce in the results, but just fyi).

i tried it without the /2, but that corrected by TOO much. so half seems to yeild better results, at least in this particular circumstance. its by no means a global fix, as it completely doesnt work on a different object earlier in the animation.