How to make eyes follow camera

SteveG52

I'm a new Carrara user. I'm very familiar with how to make a character's eyes follow the camera in Daz 3D but I can't figure out how to do this in Carrara. There's no "point at" button in Parameters when an eye is selected as is the case in Daz. Any help is appreciated.

JoeMamma2000

It's called a "modifier" in Carrara. Select each eyeball object, then under the Modifiers tab add a "point at" modifier. You may also have to change the axis to +Y as I recall (or is it -Y)... :) :)

JoeMamma2000

And BTW, you might also want to add a "Target Helper Object" (aka "null object") to the scene to act as a goad for the point at modifier. That way you have more flexibility in where the eyes look, especially in animations you can move the null and the eyes will follow.

Jonstark

It's under 'Behaviors' sub menu for the modify function, and yep you want Y+ selected as your axis. I use this all the time, very useful, and not just on eyes.

SteveG52

Thank you both for the quick reply. I wasn't able to try it until today. Yeah, +Y worked for me. Thanks Jonstark for mentioning "not just on eyes." Gives me something to experiment with.

argus1000

Yes, that's true. The "point at" modifier can be useful at times. But don't abuse it. Very seldom are characters eyes fixedly pointed at anything for a long time in reality. Eyes move all the time, never resting on any position for more than a moment. That's why unfortunately it is not recommended to overuse this feature. Matter of fact, nothing is more difficult than realistically orienting the position of the eyes between two characters in a dialogue. That's an art that can't be reduced to a simple technique or modifier.

SteveG52

Thanks for advice. Watched the first three minutes of TRANCE which I will get back to. That's amazing work! The render time must have been outrageous. Do you use some Carrara equivalent of animate2 aniblocks to make her walk? Or do you create all this manually?

evilproducer

Target helpers and IK can be fun as well!
Riding a bike:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5mq9Sdpwc

Keeping a foot locked down and using it to control the arms and upper torso:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQhoy3hB9J0

Keeping the hand on the hip, overriding an NLA clip (NSITWIW- Not Safe If The Wife Is Watching):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWBRuJlQhA

SteveG52

Thanks evilproducer. I'll check out those and other youtube videos. I have a lot to learn.

evilproducer

argus1000 said:

Yes, that's true. The "point at" modifier can be useful at times. But don't abuse it. Very seldom are characters eyes fixedly pointed at anything for a long time in reality. Eyes move all the time, never resting on any position for more than a moment. That's why unfortunately it is not recommended to overuse this feature. Matter of fact, nothing is more difficult than realistically orienting the position of the eyes between two characters in a dialogue. That's an art that can't be reduced to a simple technique or modifier.

You are very correct.

What I do for a generic walk cycle is to have the eyes track a target helper a long way from the figure. My reasoning is that when you're walking you're generally looking ahead. If you've animated the walk well, there will be slight head movements, a bit of up and down as the steps are taken, etc. The eyes will stay pointed at the target but do to the other movements will appear to move. This is something that is useful for a generic walk. I have found the effect to be more subtle with a target that is farther away. The A3 walk cycle I linked to above uses this method.

If the person is talking to someone or doing a task, such as texting or whatever, then my method would be relatively useless. ;-)

evilproducer

SteveG52 said:

Thanks evilproducer. I'll check out those and other youtube videos. I have a lot to learn.

They're more examples than tutorials, so if you have any questions about any of it, please ask!

argus1000

SteveG52 said:

Thanks for advice. Watched the first three minutes of TRANCE which I will get back to. That's amazing work! The render time must have been outrageous. Do you use some Carrara equivalent of animate2 aniblocks to make her walk? Or do you create all this manually?

No. It is most difficult, if not impossible, to animate human motions manually. I'm not talking cartoon animations here; I'm talking realistic motions. For this particular movie, "Trance", I mainly used iClone's walk designer (called "motion puppet") to make her walk, imported it into Daz Studio, worked on it with "animate 2", then imported it and refined it with Carrara's awesome graph editor. Around that time, I also started to use two Kinect cameras with Ipisoft software to record some of the motions myself. I plan to use this process more in my next movie.

Yes, The render times were outrageous. Two months. But now I have a more powerful computer. 24 nodes.

argus1000

SteveG52 said:

Thanks for advice. Watched the first three minutes of TRANCE which I will get back to. That's amazing work! The render time must have been outrageous. Do you use some Carrara equivalent of animate2 aniblocks to make her walk? Or do you create all this manually?

I forgot: it is true I did many of the up-and-down the stairs characters animations manually. Come to think of it, I did a lot of things manually.