Third Person Camera

I've recently starting working on my campaign again, and I'm going to attempt to make it entirely more roleplaying game-like, so what I'm attempting to do is put the camera continuously behind the character, so that when the main character is turned, the camera turns with it.

If everything goes as planned, the main character will never be deselected, so if that helps the creation of the trigger that would be great. Any ideas how to get this done?

I wont get into specifics (as I'm not 100% sure if this will work all of the time). Have one 'camera 1' (at maybe 347 AoA) always lock to 'unit Y' by making a trigger like:

Event - Every five seconds

Actions:
Camera - Apply Camera 1
Camera - Lock camera orientation to 'unit Y' offset by (0,-200)

- - - Now, that might be fine as long as the unit is always going one direction. I belive someone else may be working on a 3rd person view camera, so they probably know more than me. I would make 6 cameras following the unit (North, Northeast, East, etc.) This would make a good discussion topic.

This is what I got:

Events- Time - Every 0.10 seconds of game time
Conditions- none
Actions-
Camera - Pan camera for Player to ((Position of Hero) offset by 256.00 towards (Facing of Hero) with height 50 above the terrain over 0.10 seconds
Camera - Set Player's camera (Distance to target) to 775.00 over 0.10 seconds
Camera - Set Player's camera (Rotation) to (Facing of Hero) over 0.10 seconds
Camera - Set Player's camera (Angle of Attack) to 333.00 over 0.10 seconds


This does exactly what I want it to (i.e. it hovers directly behind the hero and faces whatever direction she does) EXCEPT the camera only stays at the exact same height above the terrain, but does NOT take Cliff Height into account. Is there some way I can retrieve a Z value from the Hero's position and then specific a Z value for the target of the camera?

Even better, if I could set the Camera's Z Offset attribute (which appears to be unavailable through Triggers), that would not only make the trigger simpler, but eliminate the problem.

Oh, and I have already tried
"Camera - Pan camera for Player to ((Position of Hero) offset by 256.00 towards (Facing of Hero) over 0.10 seconds" instead.

So, you've tried pan camera with "Interoporable" (Wrong Word, but like that) height? Sorry can't check any more right now, as I can't play with WE where I'm at.

Yes, that's the one I'm using now. That height, however, refers to the base terrain height, and won't take cliff levels into account for some reason, which is why I'd like to get an absolute Z value from the unit.

If I could set the "Z Offset" value, I wouldn't have to use the "Point with Polar Offset" to target, and that would mean I could simply use the unit itself as the target.

doing a .1 periodic event on multiplay, for 6 players is going to cause more lag than you can imagine, if you want to see the AWESOMEST camera angles ever you HAVE TO download this map I played. your camera is positioned behind the unit, and the unit is flying, you can change the height of how you fly, turn and fire, all with the keyboard, no clicking, and the camera stays perfect the whole time, I only wish it wasn't protected :) oh well, he deserves his secrets, its a very well put together map, here is the link to Dragon Clan Wars - http://www.umsmaps.com/cgi-bin/info.cgi?16008

It's a single player campaign, but I already feel the chuggage a bit. I also ran into a few other problems, so I'll look at this map when I get home. :)