Render surface as a camera render?

Testing6790

Even typing it makes it sound impossible, but is there a way to make a surface a render of the current scene from a certain camera's point of view? A perfect example is exactly what I'm trying to do:

I have a camcorder prop in my scene with a fold-out viewfinder. I've attached a camera to the front, to emulate what it sees. Can I render the scene and have that surface be a separate render from said camera?

I know that I can render from that camera, make that render the surface and then render, but I obviously would like to skip the extra step.

Thanks.

WendyLuvsCatz

I know MikuMikuDance can do this and apparently Cinema4D
Since DS does not natively do animated surfaces i do not see the point,
rendering from the cameras view first what most would do
Certainly for Carrara I have wished it had this feature, DS inbuilt animated surfaces not a plugin would suffice!
Not dissing the plugin, is a good workaround but unlike Carrara and Poser where you can see surfaces and backgrounds update in preview it is only a render addon, which is why a camera in scene render could not work.
In Carrara, Poser and iClone for that matter the texture refreshes in preview so a camera filming in scene theoretically could too if coded in.
DS the texture gets added each render pass scrolling through a script.

Cybersox

Paradigm67 said:

Even typing it makes it sound impossible, but is there a way to make a surface a render of the current scene from a certain camera's point of view? A perfect example is exactly what I'm trying to do:

I have a camcorder prop in my scene with a fold-out viewfinder. I've attached a camera to the front, to emulate what it sees. Can I render the scene and have that surface be a separate render from said camera?

I know that I can render from that camera, make that render the surface and then render, but I obviously would like to skip the extra step.

Thanks.

Given that the image on the monitor would have to be rendered from a completely different position with the appropriate lens and focal settings to look believable, and that you'd then have to keystone it, plus add any on screen displays or captions, and then add a "glass" surface above it to catch ambiant room light and reflections, it seems like the amount of extra processing and rendering involved would take so much extra time that it would be a lot faster to do two renders and composite. Especially since the second image on the monitor could be rendered at an extremely low rez.

If you really don't want to do it in photoshop, I'd think that the next best way would be using a set of primitive planes in the shape of the monitor screen, map the "monitor image" to that and then stack a second primitive with a glass shader on top of it.

Mattymanx

YOu dont have to render the extra image super large or highly detailed. Just look at the UV and determine the size it needs to be and render. Then take that render and apply it to the screen in the surface tab of DAZ Studio