Viewport idea: Ability to select a character's POV

Inkubo

This idea may be entirely impractical, but I'm-a throw it out anyway...

The Viewport has a selector from which you can choose a point-of-view like Front, Left, Perspective, any camera or aimed light... My idea is to add a submenu called "Eye" which lists all the characters present in the scene, so you can select anyone's particular POV without any fiddling with cameras to simulate it. Obviously this would be done by having the software define an invisible camera set up as closely as possible to the characteristics of human vision, and when you select it as the POV, DS would: move the invisible camera into place between the character's eyes, make the character's heirarchy temporarily invisible so anatomy and clothing won't block its view, and rotate the camera to match where the character is looking.

Now, I know it doesn't seem that having a camera whose settings you can't access or change would provide little benefit, but actually this would provide several benefits:

• No fiddling about to find a character's POV--you get that for free just by posing the character.
• You can make sure a character's eyes are posed right, to be looking where you want, by just "looking through them" while making adjustments.
• If you want to use an actual camera, with settings you could change any way you want, creating it would be as easy as choosing the character's-eye view, clicking the button to create a new camera, then choosing the option to copy the viewport's settings.

I'm not going to hold my breath for it, but I do think it would be a neat enhancement to the software.

Eustace Scrubb

What of figures without eyes--- like conforming clothing that may have other figures conformed to it in turn?  Or those with many eyes:  as spiders or shoggoths?

WendyLuvsCatz

can create and parent a camera to an eye with parent in place unchecked

chris-2599934

It would be nice to have this automatically, but till then you can set one up yourself...

Syrus_Dante

Or you could use a one click solution with this script mcjMakeHeadCam.

But all these head cams just point in the direction where the head is rotated to. If you realy want to see through the the eyes parent the camera to one of the eyes.

Then I would suggest using this script Look At Me Pose Control by RiverSoft Art.

mmitchell_houston

Syrus_Dante said:

Or you could use a one click solution with this script mcjMakeHeadCam.

But all these head cams just point in the direction where the head is rotated to. If you realy want to see through the the eyes parent the camera to one of the eyes.

Then I would suggest using this script Look At Me Pose Control by RiverSoft Art.

I just looked at the highlighted product, and it doesn't sound at all like what the original poster was suggesting. Does it really create a camera that is easy to move and use?

mmitchell_houston

Eustace Scrubb said:

What of figures without eyes--- like conforming clothing that may have other figures conformed to it in turn?  Or those with many eyes:  as spiders or shoggoths?

I think it's fair to say this would work only on humanoid figures with one head and one or two eyes.

Maybe the hypothetical upgrade would let it handle multi-headed creatures. ;-)

Syrus_Dante

Sorry I didn't watch the video before posting the video actualy shows how to parent the camera to the eye not the head.

Just do it like Wendy_Carrara suggested:

create and parent a camera to an eye with parent in place unchecked

This is a much quicker method because the camera would automaticly snap in position and orientation of the figures eye and would just need some minor adjustments like a slight translation on the z axis. This would save you from the first 5 minutes process that Black Sun Comics showed in the video.

 

@mmitchell_houston

The Look At Me Pose Control by RiverSoft Art script does automate the posing of the eyes and the head-neck rotation so the figure is actualy looking at something. Or in the move to look at something because you have a percentage slider. You don't have to fiddle around with manualy posing the character to have it look at something with this script. You could also use Point At Target node on the eyes but this is not as practical. The Point At is all or nothing and not useful for animation.

 

My freebie solution

I did something like this a few years ago. That didn't work as expected because I was a newbie at DazStudio at this time and thought it would work just like in Poser.

See the G2F_EyesCam in the first image. If she can't reach the cube with her eyes you could adjust the head-neck rotation pose control with the posing props (RigMaster) and check the camera. It was even possible to look thrugh the camera and adjust the head-neck rotation (pose controls) with translating the props in front of the face with the translation tool in the viewport.

Precise Eye - Point At Null-Target / LookAt-PoseControl