placing an object in a character's hand

jstilton

hi,

i was wondering if there's an easy way to move an object (e.g. a glass, a bottle, a gun...) to a person's hand. i'm not talking about a preconfigured pose, but just moving it so that it's already in the right place at least. in my experience translating it on the x, y and z axis till it touches the hand can take a lot of time. so i wonder if i can somehow give the object the coordinates of the hand or something?

thank you
james

jsdaz_5811013940

I too have struggled with this one. Here is what I do, but there are likely better ways. Please excuse me if this is how you do it.

Mostly I work with the Universal tool. First set up the hand to a pose that makes sense for your prop. Now select the Universal tool. In the first image it is the second icon from the left. Select the prop. The example image is a G2 ranger and arrow. I want to move the arrow into the left hand.

Use the Move/rotate frame to position the prop in relation to the hand. I don't know its actual name. It is the Red-Green-Blue frame that you see typically at the center of the prop. Dragging the red, green, or blue arrowheads will drag the prop in that direction only. Dragging one of the three circles near the arrowheads rotates in that direction only. Dragging the colored cubes allows you to scale in that direction. Dragging the center white cube will scale the whole object uniformly. This is a very well designed piece of GUI.

You will have to rotate your perspective in order to see which direction to move and rotate. It will take a few iterations to get all three axes and rotations just right. I generally translate the object to the hand, then rotate into position. Finally tweaking the translation to get it just right.

Once in position, don't forget to parent the prop to the correct hand. Used to be really annoying when I forgot to do that. But now with crtl-Z as an undo you can recover quickly.

As you suggest, you could write down the coordinates of the hands for your figure and then type them in to your prop. You would still have to tweak in all six axes. I just find the move-rotate frame super easy.

Hope that helps.

jstilton

thanks for this. i normally don't use those pointers on the objects (the red, green, yellow things) much because i find it hard to precisely select the right ones (always takes a couple of clicks), but i have found out that sometimes they work better than changing the dials of the translation axes.
still, it remains all quite cumbersome i think. most of the time i need to turn my whole image to see if the position of my object is exactly right. if there would a function like "move this object to this position" (the way parenting works, but it would just move them in space without sticking them)

thanks again

Szark

Select the hand first the hold down CTRL and select the prop, go to the Content Library Pane > Daz Studio Formats > My Daz 3D Library > Scripts > Utilities > and double click the SnapParent script That should move the prop closer to the hand so you can refine it more.

Richard Haseltine

Select both the prop and the hand bone, then go to Scripts>Utilities in the Content Library pane under DAZ Studio formats>Your content directory and double-click Snap Parent. If you do this a lot right-click on the script and select Create Custom Action - that will add it to the Scripts menu. (I thought this used to be included in one or more of the menus already but I'm not seeing it in my layout.)

Szark

Yeah Richard I thought so to but couldn't find it either

jsdaz_5811013940

RH and Szark have just taught me a cool new method. Will try it out.

I too struggle a bit with grabbing the arrows and circles in the rotate-translate frame. It helps a lot to zoom in on the frame in order to grabs the tool.

Szark

I always use the perspective or a new camera to zoom in just for adjusting leaving the main render cam in place

jstilton

thanks, i tried this script (never used it), and a lot of little windows went open and a lot of stuff seemed to be processed, but nothing happened (with the glass and the hand i selected). they remained in place

selecting the hand bone, is that just about clicking on the hand?

JimmyC_2009

jstilton2000 said:

thanks, i tried this script (never used it), and a lot of little windows went open and a lot of stuff seemed to be processed, but nothing happened (with the glass and the hand i selected). they remained in place

selecting the hand bone, is that just about clicking on the hand?

Yes, the hand bone is the 'Right Hand' or 'Left Hand' when selected in the Scene pane (Genesis, it may be a slightly different name in other models)

I have tried this myself, some glasses work flawlessly, but others don't do so well. To make sure that the Script is working properly on your setup, create a small primitive (Sphere or Cube?) and select both the Hand and Sphere, and try the script to see if it places the Sphere near the Hand.

One of the glasses I used that worked, was from the Fifties Dinette btw.

jstilton

ok, i will check that out, thanks

is it normal than on executing the script i got like ten little windows consecutively processing files? or is it just on first use?

Szark

No it is not normal, makes me wonder what you did to get all those windows, were they dos windows?