Load up Jessi or James. Place a prop some distance in front of their heads. Select head and "point at" the prop. Does the point at work right, or does it still come out the top of their heads as it does with every other Poser figure?

Ill check it now~ BRB

Yep, same stupid problem that we have had since Possette was released. When will they ever listen to the animators?

they did fix the frame number in the animation pallate now...
there is 5 digit slots instead of the 3 like before (the counter)
Nothing to do with the point at mattter, but a good thing for animaions.. still, i dont tend to get any single animation over 400 frames tops... i keep em down in numbers and join the vids. Still liked that they changed it...

Message edited on: 03/25/2005 05:41

I am building a car. I have this cool feature in the car. You load the car, load your character, apply the pose file which puts the character in the seat with the hands on the wheel. You parent the hip to the seat, parent the left hand to "left steering wheel", right hand to "right steering wheel". You select the head and say "point at" head object. You animate the car driving. When you turn the steering wheel, the hands move with the steering wheel. But.... Here comes the cool part - the head of the character turns to look in the direction the wheels are facing. You know how hard it was to get that working because of this stupid problem that has been with us for five years. Anyway, the car works and will be in freestuff soon, despite of this, lol.

cool! cant wait ta see that!

nerd posted a Setup Room screenshot of Jessi's joint structure in a discussion of her eyes. The head "bone" is aligned vertically, just like most humanoid figures. Switch to one of the side cameras, select the figure's head, and open the Joint Editor. See that red cross? That indicates the end of the bone. Grab it with the Translate tool and move it in front of the face. Now the Point At function will properly aim the head. The head's joint parameters might get mucked up in the process, however, so don't overwrite the original character file if you decide to save it.

I can fix it for my own use, but if I make a product like the one above, it needs to work on the default character, not on my own modified character. I have my own two original figures, Geni and Eric, that I have been working on for almost a year now, and they don't have these problems with knees and elbows and head pointing, etc. For example. Turn your head. Now turn your neck. Um, same thing, isn't it. Why does the neck have seperate controls on Poser models? Not neccesary at all. I am not knocking CL or anybody here, I am just dissapointed that things are staying so stagnant.

You can include a pose file if all you've done is change center/endpoint locations. Just make sure to include a pose that sets it back to default for those who decide they don't know how to put them back manually.

I have not tried this... but could you maybe put a small cube prop inside the head, parent the head to it and then have the cube point at the target? What would hapen when you made the figure walk? It probably would not work would it?

i was thinking point to eyes and is there a way to 'lock' eyes so that it moves the head. ::::: Opera :::::

You can only parent the head if it's at the end of an IK chain. And that approach has some severe limitations, although it can also produce interesting results if properly set up.

Watch out moving the end point of the head. It will break conforming clothes and I think prop hair will load in the wrong spot (I have to test that to be sure). BUT You can make a joint injector with the repositioned head joints that can be used to fix conforming clothes broken by the repositioned head end point. Open a saved CR2 (uncompressed, thank you) and hack out everything but the end point for the head. Save it as a pose. You would probably want to fix the eye end points at the same time ... Ya know what... gimme a bout 20 minutes. Nerd3D

Attached Link: http://www.nerd3d.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=85

Get it here it's a freebie, but you'll need to check out with it, just like DAZ, Jessi Look at Me

I tend to the opinion that it's a bad idea to lock the head to a look direction, it should really be a combination of head, neck, eye and to some degree chest and upper body movement to appear natural. Plus the "Point at" function is absolute, you cannot move the without also keyframing the "Point at" parameter which ends up defeating the purpose of the automation somewhat. Plus in this case the hands and steering wheel shouild also turn automatically so at best its only a partial solution. Maybe you consider another solution: assuming the car model is set up as a figure, create a (non-geometry) bone structure for the upper body in the driver's seat with standard body part names and then conform the driver figure to the car. You can then use ERC for the phantom body parts to animate the conformed driver figure, splitting the twist between several parts. Also you should be able to set ERC for the steering wheel rotation and even set some controller dials on the car body to push the gas pedal, check mirrors etc. I've never tried this and there may be problems with origins etc. but it could be worth experimenting with. Different base figure may need different cr2's but at least the geometries and maps can be re-used. Why does the neck have seperate controls on Poser models? Not neccesary at all. Wel actually it is necesssary, not for the twistinghead turning operation, but the action of thrusting the head forward does require a double jointed bend between the shoulder and head. Bill

Actually I was playing with this and you can get a pretty convincing effect by setting the point at for the head to about 0.4 and leaving the eyes at full power. It looks good for about 90deg of rotation ( +- 45 degrees ) But i wouldn't use it for too long an animation. You would eventually notice the neck is locked. Nerd3D