First Person and 3rd person camera and water reflections

So a little on what I am doing is this. I have two cameras in my scene. One if first-person, and the other is 3rd person. The first-person camera is going to use a ViewMask to hide 3rd person character meshes, and vice-versa for the 3rd person camera.

I noticed that since I have water in my scene that uses the render to texture from the reflection camera that is a child node of the main camera if I toggle the 3rd person camera “main scene camera” to first-person camera everything works fine except the water in the scenes reflection texture will then follow any rotation of the first-person camera. The reflection texture will not stay in it’s place.

What I’m doing now is to toggle to the first-person camera is viewport->SetCamera(cameraNode2_->GetComponent<Camera>());
obviously this bug is because I’m not using the main camera anymore. What are some solutions to this?

Thanks

You probably should manually handle reflection camera as well.
It should be glued to the node of actually used camera.

Okay so I think I figured this out before you posted this. What I did was I create 2 reflection cameras. One for each of my scene cameras. Then when toggled between either 3rd or first person. I set the water rtt texture to the active cameras child reflection camera.

reflectionCameraNode_ = cameraNode_->CreateChild();
reflectionCamera = reflectionCameraNode_->CreateComponent<Camera>();
reflectionCamera->SetFarClip(750.0);
reflectionCamera->SetViewMask(0x7fffffff); // Hide objects with only bit 31 in the viewmask (the water plane)
reflectionCamera->SetAutoAspectRatio(true);
reflectionCamera->SetUseReflection(true);
reflectionCamera->SetReflectionPlane(waterPlane_);
reflectionCamera->SetUseClipping(true); // Enable clipping of geometry behind water plane
reflectionCamera->SetClipPlane(waterClipPlane_);
reflectionCamera->SetAspectRatio((float)graphics->GetWidth() / (float)graphics->GetHeight());
reflectionCamera->SetViewOverrideFlags(VO_DISABLE_SHADOWS);

int texSize = 2048;
renderTexture = (new Texture2D(context_));
renderTexture->SetSize(texSize, texSize, Graphics::GetRGBFormat(), TEXTURE_RENDERTARGET);
renderTexture->SetFilterMode(FILTER_BILINEAR);
RenderSurface* surface = renderTexture->GetRenderSurface();
SharedPtr<Viewport> rttViewport(new Viewport(context_, scene_, reflectionCamera));
surface->SetViewport(0, rttViewport);
waterMat = cache->GetResource<Material>("Materials/relic_water.xml");
waterMat->SetTexture(TU_DIFFUSE, renderTexture);

reflectionCameraNode2_ = cameraNode2_->CreateChild();
reflectionCameraFP = reflectionCameraNode2_->CreateComponent<Camera>();
reflectionCameraFP->SetFarClip(750.0);
reflectionCameraFP->SetViewMask(0x7fffffff); // Hide objects with only bit 31 in the viewmask (the water plane)
reflectionCameraFP->SetAutoAspectRatio(true);
reflectionCameraFP->SetUseReflection(true);
reflectionCameraFP->SetReflectionPlane(waterPlane_);
reflectionCameraFP->SetUseClipping(true); // Enable clipping of geometry behind water plane
reflectionCameraFP->SetClipPlane(waterClipPlane_);
reflectionCameraFP->SetAspectRatio((float)graphics->GetWidth() / (float)graphics->GetHeight());
reflectionCameraFP->SetViewOverrideFlags(VO_DISABLE_SHADOWS);

renderTextureFP = (new Texture2D(context_));
renderTextureFP->SetSize(texSize, texSize, Graphics::GetRGBFormat(), TEXTURE_RENDERTARGET);
renderTextureFP->SetFilterMode(FILTER_BILINEAR);
RenderSurface* surfaceFP = renderTextureFP->GetRenderSurface();
SharedPtr<Viewport> rttViewportFP(new Viewport(context_, scene_, reflectionCameraFP));
surfaceFP->SetViewport(0, rttViewportFP);

This may not be the most performant way to handle this though.

Improved code. This will only use the original rtt texture for the water. No need for a second one.

reflectionCameraNode_ = cameraNode_->CreateChild();
reflectionCamera = reflectionCameraNode_->CreateComponent<Camera>();
reflectionCamera->SetFarClip(750.0);
reflectionCamera->SetViewMask(0x7fffffff);
reflectionCamera->SetAutoAspectRatio(true);
reflectionCamera->SetUseReflection(true);
reflectionCamera->SetReflectionPlane(waterPlane_);
reflectionCamera->SetUseClipping(true); 
reflectionCamera->SetClipPlane(waterClipPlane_);
reflectionCamera->SetAspectRatio((float)graphics->GetWidth() / (float)graphics->GetHeight());
reflectionCamera->SetViewOverrideFlags(VO_DISABLE_SHADOWS);

int texSize = 2048;
renderTexture = (new Texture2D(context_));
renderTexture->SetSize(texSize, texSize, Graphics::GetRGBFormat(), TEXTURE_RENDERTARGET);
renderTexture->SetFilterMode(FILTER_BILINEAR);
surface = renderTexture->GetRenderSurface();
rttViewport = (new Viewport(context_, scene_, reflectionCamera));
surface->SetViewport(0, rttViewport);
waterMat = cache->GetResource<Material>("Materials/relic_water.xml");
waterMat->SetTexture(TU_DIFFUSE, renderTexture);

reflectionCameraNode2_ = cameraNode2_->CreateChild();
reflectionCameraFP = reflectionCameraNode2_->CreateComponent<Camera>();
reflectionCameraFP->SetFarClip(750.0);
reflectionCameraFP->SetViewMask(0x7fffffff);
reflectionCameraFP->SetAutoAspectRatio(true);
reflectionCameraFP->SetUseReflection(true);
reflectionCameraFP->SetReflectionPlane(waterPlane_);
reflectionCameraFP->SetUseClipping(true);
reflectionCameraFP->SetClipPlane(waterClipPlane_);
reflectionCameraFP->SetAspectRatio((float)graphics->GetWidth() / (float)graphics->GetHeight());
reflectionCameraFP->SetViewOverrideFlags(VO_DISABLE_SHADOWS);

Then you can just pass the 1st of 2nd reflection camera to the active viewport based on which camera is active in the scene.

Leaving the code for anyone in the future.