Camera Shake

Shake the camera when the player takes damage or on impacts for visual feedback.

Technique

Instantly offset the camera's rotation on X (pitch) and Z (roll) axes, then smoothly return to the base rotation using exponential decay in useFrame.

Key Concepts

• Store rotation offsets in a module-level object for external triggering
• Use exponential smoothing: (target - current) * (1 - Math.exp(-speed * dt))
• Apply offsets to camera.rotation.x and camera.rotation.z
• Call shake(intensity) from anywhere to trigger the effect

Usage

const shake = (intensity = 0.05) => {
  rotationOffset.x = (Math.random() - 0.5) * intensity
  rotationOffset.z = (Math.random() - 0.5) * intensity
}

// In useFrame:
rotationOffset.x += addSmoothExp(rotationOffset.x, 0, 10, delta)
camera.rotation.x = rotationOffset.x

Related Skills

• smooth-interpolation - Exponential smoothing formula details

This skill is part of verekia's r3f-gamedev.