Sharks with laser beams

Seven193

Sorry, I didn't know how to describe this topic. I'm looking for something that can shoot a ray out of the center pupil of each eye of a Genesis character, so I can visually see what a character is looking at. Did mCasual ever do something like this?

Mattymanx

I suppose you could just create two primative cylinders and parent them to the eyes (lying down so the top is pointing forward) and just adjust the Y axis on the cylinder so that its shoots out of the eye.

Seven193

I tried that, but it's somewhat inaccurate since the origin of the cylinder stays at worldspace (0,0,0), even when I parent it to the eye, so I have to mess around with placing it, and scaling it as accurately as possible.  But, I guess it will have to do for now.  Thanks.

Serene Night

These? https://www.daz3d.com/superbeam

Richard Haseltine

Dave230 said:

I tried that, but it's somewhat inaccurate since the origin of the cylinder stays at worldspace (0,0,0), even when I parent it to the eye, so I have to mess around with placing it, and scaling it as accurately as possible.  But, I guess it will have to do for now.  Thanks.

Move the beam to, and orient it to match, the eye then parent it to the eye (or the head if the eye doesn't have a bone)

Seven193

I guess there's no way to set the cylinder's origin to the eye's origin? So, when I reset its transform to zero, it should move back to the eye, not the worldspace origin. Parenting has no effect on it transform.

Richard Haseltine

Select the beams, when they are correctly position, and go to Edit>Object>Memorise>Memorise Selected Item(s). Then use Restore, rather than Zero, if you want to reset them.

chris-2599934

I sometimes position and parent a camera to a figure's eye - then you can literally see what they're looking at. I got the idea from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMGH6uFjv4&t=270s

Sfariah D

Sharks or Genesis?  Or any figure?  Now to research if there are any good sharks in the marketplace?

Seven193

chris-2599934 said:

I sometimes position and parent a camera to a figure's eye - then you can literally see what they're looking at. I got the idea from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMGH6uFjv4&t=270s

The reverse camera trick looks much better, thanks!

Sven Dullah

Miss Bad Wolf said:

Sharks or Genesis?  Or any figure?  Now to research if there are any good sharks in the marketplace?

Yeah I have th beams... but no shark...maybe a dolphin or a tuna fish?

Syrus_Dante

I know this video but I had to fast forward the first 5 minutes or so before he gets to the Point At property, because beside of the explanations it takes that long to position the camera rougthly to the posed figure head the manual way with the universal tool translations. You know this situation where you can't stand watching people doing things over complicated or simply wrong?

There is a much faster method of snapping things to the center of em other things, like a camera to the figures head, by simply using drag and drop in the Scene pane with the Parent Items In Place setting turned off in the Scene pane option menu.

Read my post at: Why do things move when unparented?

Linton

https://www.daz3d.com/sharks-by-am-great-white

https://www.daz3d.com/sharks-by-am-hammerhead

https://www.daz3d.com/great-white-and-megalodon oldie but a goodie

https://www.daz3d.com/shark ancient but still decent

Syrus_Dante

Dave230 said:

Did mCasual ever do something like this?

mcjMakeHeadCam

It will create a new camera parented to the head of any figure that has a "head" bone. It will also position the carera a bit forward right between the eyes so you don't see the inside of the head.

But to check if all the pose of the figure the head and neck rotations and the eye rotations makes the figure look at something you would need to parent the camera directly to one of the eye bones.

If you want to make the eyes always focus / look at something you can select them and define a "Point At" Target Item there is a property in the Parameters pane to do that. For a Target Item I would create a Null that you can move around in the scene, also useful for animating. But then somethimes with Point At you will see a bug and the eyes will loose the focus and giving you the "blank white eye" horror look. Also by pointing the eye-bones to something this dosn't take into account that the eyelids have to move with the eye up-down rotation. You can trigger to "update" the Point At by moving the "Point At" target like the Null that I would rename to something like LookAt-Focus_CharacterName.

But to avoid all those issues with the Point At you can also use a script like Look At Me Pose Control

Its a very useful script with alot of options.

• Look at Camera
• Look at That
• Look at Each Other
• Look into My Eyes

Can also turn the head-neck so the eyes can reach the target. Can be used for stills and animation - the biggest drawback of Point At is it can't be turned off while animating.

Syrus_Dante

Similar scripts from mCasual:

• mcjLookAtTheCamera DS1234 (not compatible with Genesis 3 & 8)
• mcjFaceTheFace (rotates only the head of one or two figures - figure compatibility unknown)
• mcjOptimalPoseA (You can choose two nodes and select to adjust one rotation axis at a time: Twist, Side-Side or Bend to let one node point at the other)