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MaleM3dia, my friend, I don't know why we're having such a hard time communicating. "What's unfair about telling you that you don't need to use edit mode after you said you used it?" That's not the unfair part. "I'm not sure where you got you have to be in edit mode..." That's the unfair part; I never said such a thing. All I said was, when I wasn't in it, I couldn't change it. When I was in it, weird stuff happened. Nothing more.
It does help, immensely, to learn that you're looking at the same figure. That rules out a lot of false leads. At some point, after being in Edit Mode but not before, I was able to reset the two separate sets of values for each eye that loaded by default the first time I ever opened the file. Here's how it stands now:
1) Left-eye values. Note the white icon on the Twist property bar. What does it mean? Does anyone know? The tool tip says, "Click here to toggle whether this property overrides any controllers." But what does that mean?
2) You can't see the cursor, but it's hovering over the Twist property bar, where normally I would click the icon to manipulate something. As you can see, the icon has disappeared. How would I change it, if need be?
3) Right eye values. In the Viewport, both eyes look fine to me.
4). Spot rendered, and Bam! Cross-eyed. Not as bad as the first image I posted above, which had the default values I was as yet unable to change at that point, but differently cross-eyed. So the question is, which eye needs to be adjusted to make them align naturally? Left? Right? Both? I know, yes, it depends on what he's supposed to be looking at. But let's say he's just staring off into space directly to his 12:00, which in my humble opinion, ought to be the "Default Rig Position." How do I do that?
Oh: and here's where graffixguy's observations come into play: "This problem occurs no matter what scripting or which technique is used such as focusing on nulls or other objects." I don't know if that's true or not, but I take him at his word that he's a "classically trained artist and medical illustrator," and as such he would know better than I.
Any ideas, nonesuch?
Thank you for clarifying, I see your meaning better now. I know some similarly affected people, too. My aunt has a bit of a "lazy eye" but I don't know which one it is. I always forget to ask other relatives if they know, until I'm talking to her and realize again that I don't know how to connect visually.
As for the Twain story, it was the name of a play put on by a couple of shysters as I recall. I don't remember much else about it; I was in fifth grade when I read it but I remember thinking, "What a cool name for a play dreamed up by these two!" I never forgot it :)
If you're getting something different in your renderer than the viewport, try restarting DS, loading the figure and reset the eye positions and try again. The problem may be a program issue, not an actual eye issue.
Unfortunately, no :( You don't need to know anything about JCMs to see if they might be the issue though. It could be any joint that isn't tied to its character morph properly and will affect all of the G3M/F characters with unexpected results. Basically, if an issue you notice is present in the base G3M/F as well as the character, there's a good chance it's a different character that forgot to tie the JCM to its own morph. I happen to keep my content libraries set up to easily track down culprits on character issues.
As far as eyes looking slightly off or cross-eyed, that's up to the artists. If you don't pose the eyes like the rest of the body, you get the thousand yard stare from the characters. Most people *are* a little cross-eyed when they focus on something (especially something close to them). So if people are selecting the eyes and pointing them at the camera, you're going to get some cross-eyedness. The closer they are, the more crossed the eyes will look. Put your face very close to a mirror and focus on the spot between your eyes. You should be able to see you look completely cross-eyed, but as you move away from the mirror, it gets less and less severe. The complimentary effect of double vision is likewise seen looking at something close and something very far off. Make a small triangle with your hands and look at something a couple feet away through it. Close one eye and it disappears, but close the other and it's centered (the one that's centered while open is your dominant eye btw). Look at something across the street the same way, it barely seems to shift.
Most artists I know don't use the "point at" feature for the eyes. They hand pose them to get the look they're going for and to lessen the cross-eyed effect. There's a reason a lot of pose or expression packs include eye poses. I think I had a point somewhere but I've forgotten it now... oh well, some decent info up there :D
From your screen shots, it's hard to tell if you are actually at zero on the side-to-side, the default zero shows only two decimal places, but Studio can store up to 7 decimal places, in each parameter. And if the 5th decimal spot is lower than 5, it won't show rounded up. And even tiny 'not zero' amounts can show...especially in a render.
To actually ensure the number is zero, click on the numbers in the slider and type in a value.
"Basically, if an issue you notice is present in the base G3M/F as well as the character, there's a good chance it's a different character that forgot to tie the JCM to its own morph."
Thanks, Changeling... so if I read you right, I will (incorporating MaleM3dia's suggestion) restart Daz Studio and load the default G3M but not William. Then render it to see if he's also cross-eyed, which he might have become from some other character. (Yes?) If so... then what? If not... then what?
Thanks for the suggestion, mjc. I have double checked all values at least on the default G3M shown below; they're all truly 0. Screenshots show left and right eye values, respectively, and then the spot render. (I had to put a background plane in there because the transparent checkerboard pattern creates its own optical illusions after while; honestly I'm staring at a still image, watching both eyes literally moving side to side in opposite directions at this point! lol) I can't decide if he's cross-eyed or not. In some moments I'd say yes, and a few seconds later, no.
But I see something else too. After restarting Daz, now the icon in the Twist property bar is gone. I didn't show it before, but those icons (in their opposite-toggle state) were present in the Up-Down and Side-Side property bars (but no others), and were clickable. It didn't seem relevant at the time. But now, even though the one on the Twist bar is gone, the other two are still there, and still clickable. You can't see them unless you're hovering the mouse. I don't know if that's relevant to anything either.
Now I'll restart, reload William, and repeat...
Nothing has changed, except now the Twist property bar icon is back. And the icon appears in the Scale bar too (shown in the second image, where the property is selected), which I might or might not have overlooked before.
This is my saved character; next I'll repeat loading William from scratch...
The icon is a chain, it means that this dial is linked to a controller that is probably causing all your problems. The Twist dail has the link broken thus the different icon.
I have a crazy suggestion about getting "0" to take on the parameters:
Try using regular number keys, and use the normal 'enter' key on the keyboard. Don't use the number keypad on the right side of the keyboard, at least for me, trying to use the number pad never works (and it doesn't matter if number lock is on or off.) Maybe its the keyboard, maybe's its Daz, I don't know, but that's how mine works.
You can probably adjust one of the rotational parameters by a very small amount. Most likely you will want to play with the green Side-Side. You can use the dial, or key it in like I described to get an exact number without all the fuss of messing with that select tool. It should just take a very small adjustment. Additionally, you can lock the parameter in place with the padlock looking icon in its bar. This will keep that small adjustment in place for your poses, as some poses might reset it. I think this will help your cross eye problem a lot, without needing to do anything else.
And I empathize with you tremendously, john.
To everyone else, when a student cannot understand a lesson, it is ALWAYS the teacher's fault. You have to be able to look at this from the perspective of a new user and speak to them that way. The teacher might THINK they are being clear, but if the student doesn't understand, then the teacher obviously wasn't as clear as they thought they were. No if's, and's or but's about it. And instead of understanding this, we have a "teacher" blaming the student. Just think about how well that would go over in a school. Good grief, people.
This is not correct if you read the thread. We are problem solving, not teaching, and the biggest issue was trying to actually get the diagnosis started.
Generally speaking, yes there is. If Point At option for the eyes is used (in parameters tab, under general menu, Misc submenu) eyes will automatically try to stay pointed to whatever they are pointed at, so when you move the figure eyes will rotate as well. Also, when Point At is used individual dials for eye movement dont work, as in, you cant change the values, since eyes are "locked" to Point At object.
You can problem solve by teaching, and in this situation that would have made a big difference. You have to be able to gauge where the user is at in order to help them properly, otherwise nothing gets done. If you had approached it this way to begin with, this thread would not be 2 pages long with a lot of unnecessary back and forth.
If so, then you'd have to go through a process of elimination to find the culprit. If not, then it probably is something with William (but I think what you're seeing is more a result of his eye width than actual cross-eyedness; kind of an optical illusion). Either way, posing the eyes will fix it (at least for William-- his rigging is good so they won't pop out or anything).
But in order to teach, you need to know what to teach first. That's what we've done for the last page or so, trying to figure out what the issue is otherwise, you're spinning your wheels. As I said, that's what was the hardest part. As you read, we went from modelling eyes, to dials, to possibly an issue with how the character preset was saved. You just don't start telling someone how to do something when that's not what the actual issue is.
Back to topic.
Hi, everyone. I've had a busy few days away from Daz. I repeated my last few steps loading William again from scratch. This time, he loaded without two different sets of locked values in his eyes (they both have zeros in all decimal places) and he looks exactly like the images in my last post, of the saved character that I had created by first loading the G3M base and dialing in the figure. (This time I used the preset, which avoided the step of manually loading the base first.) This suggests several things to me, but maybe I'm wrong.
1) I didn't do this by accident. Nobody said I did; I'm just ruling that out. In order to adjust the eye positions, you either have to drill down from the base figure as someone said earlier (as many as nine mouse clicks), or at the very least click on each eye individually, select the numerical value of each of six properties, alter it to at least 4 negative decimal places (which I know they were because selecting that and typing 0 without using my number pad is how I finally reset them while in Edit Mode; outrider, your empathy is very much appreciated!), and then lock those six values in place. I didn't do that.
2) The problem doesn't seem to have propigated from the G3M base, or at least the really wild numbers didn't. That he still looks crosseyed at 0 probably does. (Did I understand, ChangelingGirl, that that's what you wanted me to verify? Do you concur with my conclusion?) Maybe it'll always be a mystery why that figure loaded so cockeyed. But I think he's as fixed as he's going to get.
3) I still don't know what "controllers" the link icons refer to; if I did I could troubleshoot them. Maybe. I also don't know how to get rid of the icons or what their default state is or how to change the Twist property if I need to.
4) I still don't know what Edit Mode is properly meant to be used for. I'd like to, though.
5) I followed Richard's suggestion and unchecked "Display Separate Items." Then when I restarted the program and discovered that almost the entire list of Parameter properties had disappeared - which I've never seen in 18 months of using Daz - I determined that "Display Separate Items" is something I really do want to have checked. Not sure what it means ("Separate" as opposed to what?), but now I know what it does. No, thanks : )
6) I'm pretty sure I'm now on board that arranging all the scene's figures as desired, then manually adjusting each of their eyes before I render so they look right from the camera angle (but no other!), is the way to go. An unbelievably tedious prospect. It still boggles my mind to think that this is what everyone does, every time with every figure, without begging Daz to fix it as graffixguy offered to help do. The error is built in, so I don't trust what I see anymore. As Changeling suggested, there's some amount of optical illusion at play and different people will see different things. I doubt I'll ever see the renders I've already done, the same way again.
Any final thoughts on the outstanding questions are welcome, but otherwise I don't know what else to ask. Thank you all for your patience and the considerable time you devote to trying to help people who are over their heads. Whenever I start to agree with my Dad that "People are just no damned good" I come here and ask a question! : )
The default Parameters pane options are Consolidate Properties on and Display Separate Items off - that should show all properties with a single node selected, and with more than one node selected it allows you to set all to the same value (on a shared property) in one operation (useful for things like finger posing).
Hi, Richard. I confess to lingering confusion on the Display Separate Items option. I've experimented a bit more with it and I do get the meaning of it now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this who doesn't understand the property (like me until a few minutes ago): If you select multiple nodes in the Scene pane, then with Display Separate Items checked, each node is displayed separately in the left side of the Parameters pane. You can still influence them together by also selecting them there, but unchecking Display Separate Items saves you the extra mouse clicks by showing - only? - the shared properties of all selected nodes. Does it do anything else?
I normally work on only one node at a time, and since with only one selected, the Display Separate Items option seems to require me to open a sub-group (like Morphs or Display) on the left pane in order to see the relevant properties on the right... I'd rather not do that. I prefer to see all properties on the right without trying to memorize which properties belong to which groups.
I'm still confused why mine has always been checked if the default is unchecked. Without knowing what it does, I wouldn't have chosen to change it. But I learned how to use Daz with this item option turned on. Is it possible that choosing a different Style option from the Window menu might change this sort of thing? I remember playing with that to see what different styles are like.
All properties are displayed (or should be).
There was a time when both Display Separate and Consolidate were both checked, or seemed to be - if you had that version and hadn't chnaged since that might explain what you had set.
Great! I'm indebted for the education; I learn something every time you post anywhere : )