First person camera: How to set it up?
Imago
Posts: 5,248
I'm trying to setup a camera parented to the char's head to have its point of view, but every setup looks "weird"
Some times objects and other chars looks like deformed by a deep space wormhole, some other times they look too much next to the char's head...
Someone knows the right setup to have a "human like" point of view?
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OK, let me try to propose a different way.
First position the camera at the person's head, showing into the direction, which the eyes look to. Now adjust the settings of the camera (focal length, position, ...) to suit your impression. Keep in mind, that for some render engines the lenses must be some inches in front of the head surface. Often I had to position the camera some inches behind or in the head and set the head "invisible".
Only at the very last end you can parent the camera to the head, or better to one of the eyes. If your character turns his eyes, your camera follows this move.
This randomly-googled photography link has a great set of comparisons of the effects of different focal length lenses (see very first picture), which might help you. Keep in mind if you change the focal length to zoom in, you will also have to back the camera farther away from the subject so the resulting picture is still about the same size.
http://annawu.com/blog/2011/09/focal-length-comparison/
Uhm... Probably I put the question in the wrong way... This time I'll use some image to be more clear.
In the first image (Perspective) we have a sweet girl talking with her untextured daddy. The camera is parented to the man's head with the parameters shown in the right. The negative values looks to be the only way to keep the sight "straight" when rotating it up and down.
In the second image (Shot_1) we can see what the man sees with default values. The girl's face is too close to the "watcher"
In the third image (Shot_2) I modified the value "focal lenght" to 35, as suggested by the image indicated by Sriesch. Still looks too close.
Now, if I try to bring the focal lenght to 16, always as suggested by that website, the man can see his own foots and they look like 100 meters away from his head and the girl become a midget...
I tried many values, but always looks somehow "wrong"...
How can I obtain a normal human eyesight?
50mm lense and 3:2 format of 35mm film is considered to come closest to a humans eyesight field view.
this comes from the "SHARP" field of view.... humans see a little bit more wide (and our brain tricks the field of view - STEREO).... try a 43 - 45mm lense in DAZ... this comes closest to simulating humans eyes.
After reading your comment, I tried the values you suggested, but the girl's face still looked too close to the viewer.
I also googled "humans eyesight field view" (As you wrote) and I found some photo specialized websites (and even an optometrist!) that confirmed your values... So I got an thought... If the values are correct, why the girl is that close?
I parented a cube primitive to the camera and moved it back and forth to see "where and when" it was fully visible. I found out that the camera starts to "see" at -5.50 of its Z-Axis and not from its center. This was the reason that made the shots that close to the subject!
Thanks, everyone! I finally got the right values and found out why my shots was so bad! ^.^
Probably is a good idea to put this info somewhere to help someone else!
It is so difficult to copy the fiel of view of a human eyes because of perspective distortion/compression -> our eyes "see" just a part of the full vision field, sharp and in color.... if you take now a wide angle lense to cover the humans eye angle of vision (124 - 180 degrees) you get perspective distortion which will not naturaly looking ...
I found a very good link which explains the problem better then i can in english with some visual animated graphics:
http://buildmedia.com/what-are-survey-accurate-visual-simulations/
"I found out that the camera starts to "see" at -5.50 of its Z-Axis and not from its center."
That's a interesting finding... i never thought about - but it looks as IRAY also takes the focal point of a lens into account (the lenght of a lens - or correct: the distance from the focal point to the sensor or lens (minus 5.5)
if this is a physically correct simulation then the distance (your -5-5) would change with aperture and focal lenght...
definitly the cameras center 0, 0 in iray is the focal point and not the lens top - that's why you had to add the lens focal lenght (50mm) to the cameras position to get the lens surface congruent with the eyes surface.
Yea,
the second factor is our brain.
Our eyes capture a lot of pictures, changing the focal point, moving around all over a wide field. Our brain collects all these impressions, or only concentrates on a small area of the scene.
At the very end our brain composes all these pictures and builds the final impression we realise and remember as the scene we saw.
But if you take your DSLR and make a picture you say, that this picture is completely different to what you saw with your own eyes.
That's it was it is.
OK,
I wouldn't go to much on the parameters. The better way is to check the position of the camera visually. At the end, parent it under the eyes. So left eye camera under the left eye.
Here I positioned my Stereo Camera at the eyes of my person.
Now I let him look down at his son.
As you see, the camera moves with the head - or better: with the eyes.
Here you see the results.
Even in 3D.
The focal length was 40mm. As the cameras are positioned with their lenses in level / some mm behind the eye's cornea, you have to set the head and the eyes to "invisible" for successful render.
nice demo - now i just need some 3d glasses