I am exasperated and frustrated as hell and have been fighting this too long!!!

How do you get your DAZ character(namely V4 for me) to look directly into the camera?!

Or at least towards the camera so it appears she's looking directly at the viewer?

Someone gave me some info how to do it or how he did it months ago, but I never did understand it. It seemed waaay too complicated for something that should be simple.

The basic way I've tried to do it is get the direction or angle towards her I wanted and then create a camera with the Perspective View option. I've tried it with & without the  Persistent Point At Target(Null). And the Default option at top of Create new Camera.

Nothing friggin works! Regardless of what Ido, she's always looking off to one side or the other when using any given camera. Like she's gazing over my right or left shoulder just a few inches, but never directly towards me, eye to eye.

What little I remember from what the person here told me sometime last year is that I need to create a series of Nulls all in line with each other aimed directly towards me.

In other words, a Null for a Null for another Null, for another Null for...

Seriously now, is that what you have to do whenever you pose a V4, Genesis or other character towards you like in a portrait? How do you do it when you want to make a portrait, pinup or whatever with your characters here or at DA and have them looking directly at you?

And if I create a Camera "Target" for her eyes to point to instead of the cameras themselves, that just makes her eyes or eyelids to droop down to the side far away from where the camera is or supposed to be.

There are a lot of people I'd ask here at Rendo, except most of them seem to be using Poser anymore, which doesn't help me. How do you do this in DAZ?

I spend all night sometimes trying to get one image to work where I have direct eye contact. Four, 6, sometimes 8 hours of trial and 99% error trying to get one that works! Sometimes an entire night & morning spent with no success, adjusting her body in Parameters and banging my head against a wall! I'll try the Camera vantage & Pan & Orbit controls to move her body around to point the eyes at me. But her eyes don't stay on me for more than a second before they settle or slide to the right, left, up or down. Why is it so damn hard?! What am I missing here?!

It's about 5 a.m. here. Do you know when I started working on this last pic? 9 PM last night! Still no success!

There is a simple solution if I understand you correct.

Select both eyes, then under parameter|all click on the "Point At" button and select the camera you want her to look at.

Hope this helps.

I feel and understand your frustration. I have same problems with lighting in Poser2012..Good thing there are people here at the forum that can help us...

Quote - There is a simple solution if I understand you correct.

Select both eyes, then under parameter|all click on the "Point At" button and select the camera you want her to look at.

Hope this helps.

I think one problem I've found with the "point at" approach is that it rotates the eyeballs themselves, but doesn't look natural because the eyelids don't adjust with them. (Although maybe I'm doing something wrong.)

This is my approach with Genesis: Once the camera is positioned, I select the camera in the viewport, turn off visibility on the head and hair, and use the Head/Eye pose controls for up-and-down, and side-to-side until the pupils appear centered in the eyeballs, like a bulls-eye.  Then turn the head and hair visibility back on.  That automatically adjusts the eyelids and such for a more natural look (which of course can be further adjusted afterwards).

I used to do something similar for V4.  I don't remember exactly; but I'm fairly sure it was also using some kind of controller, not direct rotation or Point At for the eyes.

dcd111,

Yeah, I've been doing the Point At thing and that does not work 99% of the time much to my frustration.

Anyway, I've actually turned off the Point At  and not used any cameras but just Perspective View a few times. That worked on maybe a couple images when I just used the eye control sliders for up & down, side to side, but even then that was still major trial & error for countless hours! I tried that on this latest pic and no success. I could never get both left & right eyes aligned towards me, and just as importantly with each other. I would get the left eye pretty close, but the right eye was always a little off or slightly cross-eyed or vice versa. There's something in the parameter controls for iris align and I tried that thinking that would align both eyes, but it did not.

Another thing is sometimes she is close enough that I can see pretty well if her eyes are on target, but other times she's positioned farther away in a bedroom or boudoir scene like lying on a bed virtually 8-10 ft away and when she's farther away in the image, that makes it even harder to check for eye contact and alignment.

But bottom line is that whether she's far or close, I still can't get direct eye contact without epic struggles with these controls.

Oh, and another thing is that anytime the scene or parameters or content library pane is open when I'm adjusting the parameters, etc, that gives a different and inaccurate indication of whether I'm getting that direct eye contact. I have to close the pane on the right after every adjustment, and then reopen it & try some more. That's where so much of the trial and error comes in.

So I don't know what else to do. Other people are getting this working in their portraits & pinups, but I don't know why I can't.

I recall somewhere reading that point at doesn't work with the default camera - that may be why it works sometimes and sometimes not. Typically though, having the eyes point at the camera will give a slight cross eyed effect (i think you can manually adjust the parameters to remove the crossed eyes).

My cheat is a little more complex, but usable. I usually put two small spheres in the scene, parent them together, place them where I want the eyes to look. I then use point at with one eye looking at each sphere. I simply adjust the  sphere separation to address the crossed eyes syndrom. This also makes it easier to have the eyes focus anywhere in the scene you want.

Not a super simple solution, but workable. Hope it helps.

DustRider,

Explain more how you do that please.

Where do you get the 2 small spheres, and then how do you parent them? I've forgotten how to do that, embarrassed to say but true.

Seems to me though, that would just take me right back to the original problem of pointing at cameras. Why do the spheres work any better than pointing the eyes at the camera? And will the spheres show up in the image?

And do I position a camera directly behind the spheres, in front, or skip cameras entirely & just use Perspective View?

I spent so much time on all that stuff last night & this morning I think I'm cross-eyed now!

Load a small prop. Put it behind the camera, a long distance from the figure and the camera, but in the same line.
(use a top view to help with the positioning)

Try the point at with that prop...
The increased distance may help.

Just an idea though, but it might be worth a try?

EDIT: Dust Rider's solution is even better. Try his! :)

I create a null in the same location as the camera, once the camera is where I want it and locked down to prevent accidental movement between renders.

Having the eyes point at that seems to work better, and allows some adjustment without messing with the camera.

The null object uses less memory than a sphere or random prop, too  

Point at has always been used but I always found it a clunky way to do it. There is an eye control in V4 that you can move and it does them both at the same time.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/13327/

While it started out as a rant thread, this actually has some good suggestions for eye positioning.

Quote - I create a null in the same location as the camera, once the camera is where I want it and locked down to prevent accidental movement between renders.

Having the eyes point at that seems to work better, and allows some adjustment without messing with the camera.

The null object uses less memory than a sphere or random prop, too

Well, if by that you mean Create>New Null>Apply Active Viewport Settings-Camera 1>Accept

but before that I have to position her eyes manually towards me or the camera as precisely as possible as I spend many hours trying to do.

And how do you lock the camera down so it can't be moved?

Folks, go over the camera basics with me again please. To do this, in creating a camera to lock her eyes onto, do I...

1. a. Apply Default Settings? or

    b. Apply Active Viewport Transforms and/or

    c.  Create A Persistent Point at Target(Null) at the same time as I create the camera in that dialog box?

1. Do I then go to Parameters & point both her eyes at the Camera or the Null?

Wait, just tried those. Neither works if selecting 1.c. One eye droops down(left) and the other eye points up, or after moving a bit with the Vantage point control, the right eye does correct itself and look straight ahead(blank stare)but her left eye still stays pointed down to the floor.

So 1c option above doesn't work.

If I use 1b, her eyes stay in place by staring straight ahead, but it's a blank, staring into space kind of look. She's not actually looking at us.

If I create the Camera first and THEN the Null, which of the 5-6 options under Create New Null>Options do I use?

You ponmt the eyes at the camera, not the camera at a target (which is what the option is for).

Quote - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/13327/

While it started out as a rant thread, this actually has some good suggestions for eye positioning.

I looked over that thread. What I'd like to know is how you send(move?)the Null, which is an imaginary object you can't see in DAZ anyway out away from her 5000 units? How do you measure units(?) in DAZ?

Also, pardon my cluelessness, but how do you create that 10cm tall cylindrical primitive the other guy was talking about and do you move it the same distance?

Quote - You ponmt the eyes at the camera, not the camera at a target (which is what the option is for).

That's what I've always done. At least after choosing Apply Active Viewport Controls under Options for Create New Camera. And then I would spend hours trying everything I could find to get her eyes to stay pointed at me instead of slightly settling or sliding off to the left or right  over my shoulder out into space again.

I "lock down" the camera because I have a tendency to forget I'm not in perspective view and whiz off on a tangent, which really messes things up if I'm doing multiple shots in a render.

Select the camera

Go to the parameters tab.

Click the lock icon on the x, y, and z translate and rotate slides.

No need to spend any time point eyes at the camera or adjusting the camera for eyes, Just create a null at the same location as the camera using the steps you said , point the eyes at the null, and move the null or the character a bit as needed.

To move the null, you select it in the scene tab. You can use the arrows on screen or go to the parameters tab, general, and move it there. You can enter spcific xyz coords by clicking on the number and entering a different one.

Primitives are on the create tab.  You can enter dimensions and number of sides when you create the primitive.  

Thanks Arkathan,

I'll give it a try later. My mind is just not in the right frame to take this on right now with a lot of other stuff to do, but will get back to this sometime soon.

Thanks for your reply. And if anyone else has any tips, please feel free to share.