Unlock the power of smooth transitions in Unity with the Lerp function.

How to Use the Lerp Function in Unity to Smoothly Transition Between Values

Learn how to use linear interpolation to animate game objects, change colors, and more in Unity.

Photo by Clément Hélardot on Unsplash

Lerp is a function in Unity that stands for linear interpolation. It is a mathematical operation that calculates a point that is a certain percentage between two other points. This is often used in games to smoothly transition between two values, such as positions, colors, or other properties over a given time.

Here is an example of how you could use the Lerp function in Unity to animate a game object moving from one position to another over time:

using UnityEngine;

public class AnimationExample : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Transform startPosition;
    public Transform endPosition;
    public float animationTime = 1f;

    private float animationTimer = 0f;

    void Update()
    {
        // Increment the animation timer by the time that has passed since the last frame.
        animationTimer += Time.deltaTime;

        // Calculate the percentage of the animation time that has elapsed.
        float t = animationTimer / animationTime;

        // Use Lerp to smoothly interpolate the game object's position between the start and end positions.
        transform.position = Vector3.Lerp(startPosition.position, endPosition.position, t);

        // If the animation time has elapsed, reset the timer and swap the start and end positions.
        if (animationTimer >= animationTime)
        {
            animationTimer = 0f;
            Transform temp = startPosition;
            startPosition = endPosition;
            endPosition = temp;
        }
    }
}

In this example, the AnimationExample script is attached to a game object, and the startPosition and endPosition properties are set to the Transform components of two other game objects in the scene. When the script runs, the game object will smoothly move from the startPosition to the endPosition over the course of animationTime seconds. The t variable holds the percentage of the animation time that has elapsed, and this value is used as the third argument to the Lerp…