Close up shots and disapearing geometry

Aala

Ok, take a look at this photo:

http://i.imgur.com/AhKEMqN.jpg

Basically, what I want to know is if I can modify (and decrease in this instance) the distance at which objects start to disappear like the finger there. I looked for it but either I'm too stupid, or it ain't so obvious. I don't really want to scale models just to get it right.

Can anyone help?

Cayman Studios

You have to move the camera back a little and then increase the focal length.

Aala

Cayman said:

You have to move the camera back a little and then increase the focal length.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it's not really a solution. I'll be doing an animation where the camera moves right between her fingers, but this little annoying thing is getting in the way of that.

Lissa_xyz

Look at it in perspective view, and see where the camera 'lens' is. It's probably sitting inside the finger.

throttlekitty

This is because of the near/far clipping plane, I have no clue how to edit that in DS though. This page suggests there is a setting somewhere, if not by editing your scene file in a text editor maybe? You can alleviate the problem a little, but never truly make it go away; the camera is still penetrating the mesh.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/dson_spec/object_definitions/camera_perspective/start

SixDs

The cameras in DAZ Studio, and most other 3D programs that I am aware of, are designed to emulate real world cameras. Imagine trying to do what you are suggesting with even a tiny camera in real life. While it is true that we are dealing with a virtual world here, there are nevertheless limits to what is possible, by design. If the camera is moved closer to the hand, or zoomed, the hand seems to grow in size within the camera's field of view (FOV). The space between the fingers may expand as well, but to pass through those spaces without intersecting the mesh of the hand would mean the camera FOV would need to shrink as it did so, so not to intersect the mesh. In addition, the camera will have to make "course corrections" as it does so to avoid colliding with the fingers with the hand in the position it is in.

I don't know if the camera's FOV can be made small enough to fit in the space between a model's fingers since this is the first time I have heard of anyone attempting to do this. But if it is possible, you may be able to plot a course for your camera through the fingers, adjusting the FOV as necessary as you go, then back again. I don't do animations, so I can't say for certain, but perhaps you can use keyframes to do that?

It is a pretty unusual and technically challenging thing that you are attempting to do.

Edit: Actually, out of curiosity, I opened DAZ Studio, loaded a figure and created a simple hand pose in the form of an "OK" sign. I then repositioned the figure to line up with the default front view camera pointing at the opening between the thumb and forefinger and zoomed in. I was rather surprised to find that no apparent collision with the mesh occurred, and the result was that the camera appeared to pass through the opening as you wanted. However, If I create a new camera with default settings and align it with the opening between the thumb and forefinger, then dolly (translate) the camera forward, it intersects the mesh as you have shown. It also does the same thing if I simply zoom in. So, I played with the camera settings in the parameters tab and found that the problem was eliminated if I simply changed the perspective setting from "on" to "off". The camera now passes through the opening without issue. Go figure.

Aala

@Vaskania - If you look at the screenshot, you'll see it's already on perspective mode. There's no camera in that scene.

@throttlekitty - Thanks for the suggestion, I will definitely try that out.

@SixDs - I completely understand what you mean about the technical challenges and such, but it shouldn't matter at all on a 3D computer generated space. Because the cameras aren't real, the point at which the camera 'lens' sits can be infinitely small, thus you can pass through the smallest crack in 3D space without having to distort the field of view in any way. Here's an example:

First picture, the character is scaled to 1000%, and I can zoom in very close to her fingers (between the index and middle fingers) without any clipping occurring.

http://i.imgur.com/inchAOT.png

Second picture, same pose, same camera position etc. Now the character is dialed back down to a normal 100% scale and the camera re-positions along with it because I attached it to the character. Yet the index and middle finger are clipped out, but you can see the thumb on the left side, entirely dark because of the light occlusion between it and the index finger and the distant light of the scene getting blocked out.

http://i.imgur.com/q3wSu2H.png

And I don't wanna scale up the characters just for this effect because all sorts of other stuff like bump maps, occlusion distance and stuff like that have to be adjusted for it to fit properly into the scene.

I will try the The near clipping plane method as throttlekitty suggested and see if it works.

mjc1016

Basically you are running up against the limits of the shader programming for the cameras. It's that while, yes, theoretically a virtual lens can be a nearly dimensionless point, in practice the shaders are written so they aren't.

Aala

mjc1016 said:

Basically you are running up against the limits of the shader programming for the cameras. It's that while, yes, theoretically a virtual lens can be a nearly dimensionless point, in practice the shaders are written so they aren't.

Yeah, it seems there isn't really an option to change it. Tried the method of direct intervention within the save file, but it didn't work.

Guess I have to scale things up instead.