How to move character within environment ?
daveso
Posts: 7,786
what is the nmost effective way to move a character around within an environment.
Take Stonemason's Urban Future 6. its overall a smaller scene, but many nooks and crannies ... looking from front not so easy to manuever. from top you need to move up pretty far, but then I have difficulty trying to figure out what are the openings, etc...
I don;t find it an easy task...or is it possible to have the character move to a specific place ... like a dial in or something....
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Load a cube or a sphere primitive into your scene, and drag the primitive around while you explore your scene. When you find a place, a nook or cranny, where you want to put your character, just leave the primitive in that spot. Then - duplicate the node (duplicate that primitive) and a copy of it will be created in the exact same place as the first one. Then drag this 2nd primitive around as you continue to explore the environment. When you find another place where you want to place a character - leave the 2nd primitive there. Keep doing this. When you want to postion your actual character in the environment - click on the primitive that is in the place you want, copy the position parameters of the primitive, then click on the character (which you may have loaded in the "0" position, or maybe have dragged somewhere else. Then change the position parameters of the character to match the position parameters of the primitive. Your character will instantly appear where the primitive is in the environment. The primitives can easily be made invisible when you want to render. It's also helpful to change the diffuse color of the primitives to bright pink or something so you can see them very easily when you are looking at the whole environment.
There may be an easier way to do it, but this is how I do it.
I leave the character at zero and move the environment
Navigating around environments is a good place to use the WASD keyboard controls (standard game navigation), though as far as I know it is still not undoable so I turn it off when not needed (shift-K toggles it on and off).
I use mcasuals 'come hither' script. Navigate the camera where you want and then apply the script to the object, whatever it is. You then have to fine tune, but it makes things easier.
Location: https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/mcjco
Alternatively if you are using a camera to explore the environment you can get the camera into a close up postion then use the camera's coordinates to place the character roughly where you want it then fine tune it. You're going to want a camera there anyway to take a render of the character. If you don't want to take the extra step, parent the character to the camera to start with, that way the character will always be at the camera. When you have it where you want it, unparent the character and move the camera
that is an awesome idea i use from time to time and should do it more often, there is also a free tool available here on daz that allows you to pinpoint locations in the scene in order to move characters- i do not have it myself but if you have a huge envornment like forest it would definitely be a time saver.
i dont recall the name of the tool but it is in the store here
I actually tried this just yesterday and was really pleased with the results.
the name of the tool is POSITION HELPER TOOL sorry I m having trouble ading links in the forums but it is free and in the store if you just type in "position" in a search it pops right up
The reason i do this is so much content is designed to load at zero such as lights and props. If you move the character from zero you have to move everything else too
Yeah, I started doing this because quite a few pose packs will move a character back to the zero point. I know you can CTRL+Click and tell it not to, but sometimes I forget to do that, found it easier to just move the environment.
There's also rendering bugs that you can get in Iray - eyes turning black, odd marks on the scalp - if your character is too far away from (0,0,0).
+1
I also move the environment and not the character or props. I will be checking out the come hither script as well though. And I have position helper and have never remembered to use it!
thanks..lot of great ideas. I will try all of them
interesting that render problem moving away from zero.
That's a great idea! :)
I recently started doing this as well. I find it easier to load character(s) and set poses, then move the environment to put them where I want.
I generally find that moving characters about in the scene is easiest if you do it in Wireframe mode and from Top View. I start by loading everything initially at 0 and putting in the lights, character, clothing, accessories (or anything attached to the character) all loaded up and about how I want it (And then parent anything not parented - like the lights - to the figure. Then I load the environment next and from top view get it "basically" in the environment where I want it and then switch the camera to perspective and tell it to zero in on the character/figure and switch to Texture Shaded (with headlamp on generally) to do the last bit of tweaking.
Sometimes I do a side by side window..one wireframe top view and the other texture shaded and perspective (or a camera I make - or one that comes with the set) Generally that is how I do it when there are cameras and angles included in the set and I don't want to lose "that view" Also the Triangle on the move tool can be very handy as using those locks it to that "plane" of movement. So if you want to freely move back/forward - left/right but want to keep the "height" in the scene I tend to use the triangle. Sometimes I will do a side by side top view and front view as well. Top to get "where" and then front to line it up "on" things when needed. I move props this was as well.
That said, if you arent using a preset camera from the set etc, then as was stated above, the easiest is to move the enviro to the character rather than the character through the enviro.
Both generally work well though. Below is a screenshot of me moving about Stonemason's Enchanted Forest to better show what I mean.
And don't forget there is the ALIGN tab. Pick and object in the scene and then pick your character or object,
open the tab, change settings to align centers (I'm not in front of DS so this is all memory...)
And use align to place your character in the center of the object.
- Sometimes I have to move many objects around in a scene and find this to be a real helper. Very good for props and filling shelves and placing objects on top of stuff since everything can't be at zero. Once I place one glass on the table, I just start moving/aligning everything with the glass.
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But that script sounds nifty
If it's a new object you you want to load into the scene you can press the alt key and then drag it from the library to where you want to put it in the scene.
I gotta try that (again) when I get home. I think I might have been trying that using Ctrl instead of Alt.
Good tip.
I just undo to move the character back, and then use the ctrl+click.