Moving a paired couple from the front of the scene to another point

comixfana

Without having to unpair them and redo the small adjustments?  I'm trying to do a scene similar to the beach scene on "From here to Eternity" using the beach HDRI I bought https://www.daz3d.com/ultrahd-iray-hdri-with-dof--spanish-beach ; but I can't quite get my pair of lovers to the water without having to relocate them separately. Is there a shortcut I can use to relocate the paired couple?

 

Thanks!

 

scorpio

comixfana said:

Without having to unpair them and redo the small adjustments?  I'm trying to do a scene similar to the beach scene on "From here to Eternity" using the beach HDRI I bought https://www.daz3d.com/ultrahd-iray-hdri-with-dof--spanish-beach ; but I can't quite get my pair of lovers to the water without having to relocate them separately. Is there a shortcut I can use to relocate the paired couple?

 

Thanks!

 

Parent them both to a null and move the null.

Zai

I usually select both in the scene tab, create a group, which automatically parents them to it and then move the group. Just take them out of the group when done since that affects things while doing other posing. Kinda the same as parenting a null.

Linwelly

alternatively create a new group with both characters selected and then move the group

JOdel

One advantage to a group over a null is that you can turn off visibilty of the whole group (i.e., the characters and their clothing, hair, etc), if you need to get them out of the way while you set up something else.

Mattymanx

JOdel said:

One advantage to a group over a null is that you can turn off visibilty of the whole group (i.e., the characters and their clothing, hair, etc), if you need to get them out of the way while you set up something else.

Richard Haseltine

You can also select both figures and use the secondary node options (in Tool Settings) to move both with the Viewport gizmo.

Quasar

Richard Haseltine said:

You can also select both figures and use the secondary node options (in Tool Settings) to move both with the Viewport gizmo.

It's just crazy how much I still don't know after all these years. Thanks for another handy tip.

fred9803

Quasar said:

It's just crazy how much I still don't know after all these years.

Me too. Be aware that once you're grouped and moved them, if you want to un-group the characters to repose for another render, they'll fly off back to 0,0, and you'll have to re-group and move them again.

Havos

fred9803 said:

Quasar said:

It's just crazy how much I still don't know after all these years.

Me too. Be aware that once you're grouped and moved them, if you want to un-group the characters to repose for another render, they'll fly off back to 0,0, and you'll have to re-group and move them again.

I have never seen this behaviour. I ungroup items all the time, and they stay exactly where they were before being ungrouped.

fred9803

Havos said:

I have never seen this behaviour. I ungroup items all the time, and they stay exactly where they were before being ungrouped.

Are you talking about props or 2 characters that have been posed together at 0,0 then grouped, and then moved? I could be wrong but I seem to remember them not staying in place when ungrouped from each other.

Maybe it's to do with the type of poses used. Some will pose charactes anywhere, but some paired character poses will automatically move them to 0,0 axis. With the later perhaps un-grouping will return a figure to there.

Cybersox

And just to show that there's more than one way to do anything, you can also simply NOT move the couple and move the set around it instead.  I've actually done this a few times when I was totally happy with the figure poses, the camera framing and the lighting, but not the way the figures were contacting the ground itself.  

Havos

fred9803 said:

Havos said:

I have never seen this behaviour. I ungroup items all the time, and they stay exactly where they were before being ungrouped.

Are you talking about props or 2 characters that have been posed together at 0,0 then grouped, and then moved? I could be wrong but I seem to remember them not staying in place when ungrouped from each other.

Maybe it's to do with the type of poses used. Some will pose charactes anywhere, but some paired character poses will automatically move them to 0,0 axis. With the later perhaps un-grouping will return a figure to there.

I can not say I have tested every case, but I use grouping a lot, for both characters and props, and I have never seen anything move when it is grouped or ungrouped. There maybe a bug that causes what you say in certain cases, but I have not encountered it yet.

it is true certain poses return characters to 0,0 and this will not happen if the chars are grouped, but that is not the same as movement when ungrouping

For any pose that changes the characters position I normally control click when applying, and then remove the translation.

Zai

Hrm...I do the same. I started doing it to turn off characters completely because just turning off the body didn't turn off all the clothes. But I've never had them fly back to zero. I drag stuff in and out of groups at will. The only thing is it changes the number if you pose and do stuff WHILE in the group. So I finish the pose and don't really mess with it unless I ungroup it.

fred9803

I can't test it at the moment because I'm moving my DS library from a disc onto a SSD and don't want to risk screwing things up by running DS.... 4 hours to go.

 

richardandtracy

To be honest, I'd have done it a more basic way. Note down X,Y and Z translation for both figures on a piece of paper, translate one figure to the new position, Then subtract that figure's original translation from the final position. That gives the delta X,Y and Z. Add those translations to the second figure's translation, rigorously keeping the sign if negative. Then both will be translated exactly the same distance.

After the process I'm sure I would have remembered that one figure could have been parented to the other and then that one translated, moving both by the same amount in one go.  There are many ways to do it, finding the one that suits you best is frequently the hardest part.

Regards,

Richard.

fred9803

Well I just tested it using a "couples" pose. Posed them both and created a new group. Move the group off to one side then un-grouped the female... she shot off back to 0.0.

I thought I wasn't just imagining it.

Edit - it seems that if a pose zeros the x position of a character to pose it with another character, it will re-zero its position when un-grouped.

Havos

fred9803 said:

Well I just tested it using a "couples" pose. Posed them both and created a new group. Move the group off to one side then un-grouped the female... she shot off back to 0.0.

I thought I wasn't just imagining it.

Edit - it seems that if a pose zeros the x position of a character to pose it with another character, it will re-zero its position when un-grouped.

I tried and failed to reproduce this bug in 4.12, even when the females pose had an x trans of zero she still did not move when ungrouped.

I am clearly not doing exactly the same as you. You should raise a ticket and describe the exact steps, and maybe support can reproduce and fix the bug.

Sven Dullah

Well it depends if you have "parent in place" ticked or not.

Richard Haseltine

Cybersox said:

And just to show that there's more than one way to do anything, you can also simply NOT move the couple and move the set around it instead.  I've actually done this a few times when I was totally happy with the figure poses, the camera framing and the lighting, but not the way the figures were contacting the ground itself.  

Which would of course avoid the issues with rendering oddities due to precision issues when far from the origin, depending on the extent of the move.

Serene Night

I never move the characters from zero. Always move the set instead.

Quasar

fred9803 said:

Well I just tested it using a "couples" pose. Posed them both and created a new group. Move the group off to one side then un-grouped the female... she shot off back to 0.0.

I thought I wasn't just imagining it.

Edit - it seems that if a pose zeros the x position of a character to pose it with another character, it will re-zero its position when un-grouped.

With at least 2 objects in the scene, right click one in the scene tab and select "Change "object_name" parent". When the option box appears, make sure you select "parent in place" before parenting it to the other object. Now when you unparent other objects, they should stay in place. The "parent in place" option is persistent for all the parenting actions after whatever setting (off or on) it was last marked as. So when you drag and drop to parent items in the sene tab, it will automatically follow the "parent in place" setting you chose last.

FirstBastion

There's always more than one way to do something, I usually create a primitive plane under the figures/couple,  and parent them to the plane. Then move the plane. The advantage is,  the posed feet are already firmly placed on the plane, so when they get moved,  I just align the plane to the floor in the new location and hide it, and the feet and pose are perfectly aligned.

jjmainor

I get that problem occassionally.  For some reason DS decides not to remember that I have parent in place selected every now and then, so then I have to bring up the dialog, uncheck the box, then bring up the dialog again and check the box again.

 

Also, you will get the flying away thing if you have parameters locked on the object or figure you're trying to unparent.  I'll make doors and windows and furniture with drawers, and instead of creating them as figures, I'll create the pieces as props and parent them to the main object.  Then I'll lock the translation and rotation parameters I don't need so I don't accidently manipulate them in the future.  On rare occasions, I'll unparent one of the pieces when I want to trash a set.  I forget the parameters are locked, so when I unparent a door from the frame, it'll go off to the zeroed position within the world.

Drip

Serene Night said:

I never move the characters from zero. Always move the set instead.

That's the best option, it reduces the chances of the eyes turning black and other such bugs. This doesn't work too well if you want to pose characters off-center in a large visible HDRI, but I personally rarely do such things anyway.

Cybersox

FirstBastion said:

There's always more than one way to do something, I usually create a primitive plane under the figures/couple,  and parent them to the plane. Then move the plane. The advantage is,  the posed feet are already firmly placed on the plane, so when they get moved,  I just align the plane to the floor in the new location and hide it, and the feet and pose are perfectly aligned.

I use that method too and it works great for standing figures on a flat surface.  However, the OP specified a From Here To Eternity scene, which I believes means the classic shot of the two characters lying down on the beach together as the waves crash around them, which means that they're on an inclined surface and makes the process of lining up the primitive plane to the ground surface a bit more convoluted.  ON the other hand, it IS the beach and sand isn't a solid surface, so one would expect to see at least one of the figure's bodies to be sinking partially in the sand.     

nicstt

Serene Night said:

I never move the characters from zero. Always move the set instead.

Yeh, this.

... with the occasional exceptions.