Daz3D Pose Question: For POV shots, do you remove the rest of the body?

[FranceToast]

If I am doing a POV shot with just my hands/arm (i.e. holding a cell phone) or maybe legs/lap in view (i.e looking down) -do you remove the rest of the body with something like

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or just individually hide each part with the 'eye' icon in Scene?
And then just put the camera where the eyes might be?

 

[DarthSeduction]

I mean, that mod would probably save you a shit ton of time. Doing it the other way would require you hiding each articulated bone in the fingers.

What are you trying to do though? I can't think of many reasons I'd want to hide something except to get rid of clipping or because it's in the way while I'm setting up the scene.

 

[FranceToast]

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What are you trying to do though? I can't think of many reasons I'd want to hide something except to get rid of clipping or because it's in the way while I'm setting up the scene.

I don't have any idea what I am trying to do yet, lol.
I am storyboarding some of my proposed scenes, and I have several of the MC glancing down at something in his hand, and wondering if I have to load in an entire character model for it just for basically a hand and part of a sleeve (of course, the sleeve is attached to the sweater, and the sweater is attached to the chest, and...) Also several of the MC glancing down at his, uh...lap.

As I don't really know what I'm doing-I am just assuming that keeping the head even off camera will increase rendering times. (I will of course not include hair on the MC model unless he is visible (was still trying to go pure POV, but even in storyboarding I realize now what a challenge it is! Going to go with a hybrid/hide face approach probably)

 

[DarthSeduction]

Gotcha... yeah, I'm not a fan of POV use in games, so I didn't even think about those reasons for it. But yeah, the Eye only hides the specific element you're selecting. So you'd be better off with a mod that hides whole body parts simply.

 

[Rich]

As I don't really know what I'm doing-I am just assuming that keeping the head even off camera will increase rendering times. (I will of course not include hair on the MC model unless he is visible (was still trying to go pure POV, but even in storyboarding I realize now what a challenge it is! Going to go with a hybrid/hide face approach probably)

Technically, probably it won't increase the rendering time, if you define that as the time Daz actually spends processing pixels. But Daz will have to load the mesh and materials, even if something's off-screen. So it will increase the time that Daz takes to load up before it really starts rendering, and it will increase the amount of GPU memory that's consumed. So if you define "rendering time" as "time between when I push the 'render' button and when Daz is done," yes, it will increase that time. (I'm being really pedantic, I know... LOL) So how much of an effect it has depends on the relative load-vs-pixel-processing ratio for the scene.

Also, hiding an arm or a leg by clicking on the little eye for it does not hide the clothing that's covering the arm or leg. To do that, you'd have to repeat the exercise on the clothing as well. Bottom line - you may spend more time turning off little eyes than the difference in total render time. So, sure, exclude easy-to-exclude stuff like hair, but the rest might not be worth it.

Some of the times I've done POV shots, I just bent the head way out of the way so I could position the camera where I wanted it without it getting in the way. Remove the limits on the lower neck, and bend it back like 90 degrees.

 

[FranceToast]

So if you define "rendering time" as "time between when I push the 'render' button and when Daz is done," yes, it will increase that time. (I'm being really pedantic, I know... LOL)

No, no-this is exactly the stuff I need to know, thanks! I just figured it was going to waste time processing the off screen geometries as well (although obviously if there is a mirror or reflective surfaces in view it would, right?)

Some of the times I've done POV shots, I just bent the head way out of the way so I could position the camera where I wanted it without it getting in the way. Remove the limits on the lower neck, and bend it back like 90 degrees.

I'll try it, thanks! I'm sure I am just overthinking this stuff in storyboard mode and should just start some render tests-but I'm hoping the more I can preplan visualizing my scenes the less time I'll waste just aimlessly messing around in the renderer, lol.

 

[redle]

When I'm thinking I'll be doing multiple POVs I'm more likely to attached a camera directly to the character's head. Then I often need to hide the head and eyeballs and such in case they end up slightly in front of the lens. But this way, once the pose is set, all it takes is minor tweaking to the camera.

As for the turning things off that are off-screen, you mentioned potential problems due to reflective surfaces. Also consider whether or not your render needs shadows cast from what you may or may not hide.

 

[FranceToast]

When I'm thinking I'll be doing multiple POVs I'm more likely to attached a camera directly to the character's head.

So if I do this (attach camera to MC's head), and have a scene where I am looking at two people standing in front of me, glance over to one directly, then turn to the other one, the camera should pan more smoothly and naturally (not animation, just a cut scene) from one to the other without a lot of fiddling? Because that would be pretty nice.

 

[Rich]

So if I do this (attach camera to MC's head), and have a scene where I am looking at two people standing in front of me, glance over to one directly, then turn to the other one, the camera should pan more smoothly and naturally (not animation, just a cut scene) from one to the other without a lot of fiddling? Because that would be pretty nice.

You can accomplish this with or without attaching the camera to the MC's head, since in either case you're just changing the camera from one angle to another.

 

[DreamLab Studio]

Just an idea: I haven't tested this but I'm wondering if you could use a 'group' in the scene and place the parts you want to hide in that group. Then be able to easily hide or unhide the group. This may break the parenting for all the body parts though.

 

[Brimstone626]

You could use iRay planes. They hide things that are one side of the plane when rendering. I can't post link or upload things yet, this is my first post, or else I would just upload some for you. Say I can't post a link till I get three posts in, and after that I'm not sure how many it takes to upload a file, but I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to help out if you want. Those visibility presets are nice though, and will help when you run out of VRAM and you render defaults to the CPU. I've done a few POV shots in DAZ and it will also help to increase the camera's focal width a bit, think of it like FOV (Field of View) in a video game.

 

[OhWee]

I've also done the 'snap the neck backwards at some grotesque angle' thing that Rich mentioned a few times when setting up POV shots. I found that if I hid the head, that sometimes you'd end up seeing into the body if your camera angle wasn't exactly right.

I also wonder if having a big hole where the neck/head/etc. should be (if you hide the head instead of bending it out of the way)) doesn't end up ricocheting a bunch of light rays inside the body, through the hole, hence doing the opposite of what you want (decreasing the render workload). Dunno if all of those weird angles inside the body would end up being more ray intensive than just a face...

So, and others do this too, I've adopted the philosophy of hiding clothing and hair when it's not in the shot/render window. One Daz artist mentioned that shoes in particular can be render hogs, relatively speaking.

But yeah, i usually just bend stuff out of the way as best I can when setting up POV shots, to a point - i.e. if it looks unnatural INSIDE of the render window, then I adjust the camera angle or try something else.

 

[uhohitsuhoh]

The project I'm making is solely first person, and I've found the easiest way to do all of this is to simply create your main character, and "parent" the camera to where his head is. I try to line it up directly between the eyes, where the lens is, not the bulky body of the camera. But I fully fleshed out the character, as the nude main character, then hide the head and eyes and everything else visible in the in the camera's vision, before saving it as a scene subset.

For quicker workflow I've also saved the character in various forms of dress too, whether its the everyday outfit, sleepwear, etc. as seperate scene subsets, so I don't have to do that after loading it into a scene.

For the camera I also widened the field of vision a bit, I also was messing around the other day trying to fiddle with the depth of field, and moved the focal length and that widened things considerably, but i'm already hundreds of renders in so I abandoned it. But I'd just play around with the cameras settings prior to saving the character so the field of view is constant.

The main problems I run into are shadows and reflections. In my project I want the main character to be faceless, and relatively generic, so it isn't that big of a problem not having him in reflections and stuff, just moving the characters around a bit for the desired effect, i've even moved a mirror in a scene a little lower so you can't see the head but see his body for instance. With shadows you have to make sure alot of the character isn't visible in certain scenes, or else you'll see a headless shadow across the image, also have to make sure the shirt and anything else isn't visible for the same reasons.

But Having it parented to the head helps me in alot of areas, since Instead of moving the camera, which I can really mess up, I find it easier to move the character and his head, when you move the head the camera moves with it. You can pose the character etc. and it's just easier for me to operate with the perspective view knowing that once i put the character in the scene where i want it, its just a matter of moving the head until i get the shot needed.

 

[Brimstone626]

If you do the parent camera to head tick I also find it's much easier to use the tool that lets you point the camera with the mouse, as opposed to using the widgets in the Viewport. In case you don't know, it's the tool along the top with the 4 arrows pointing in the cardinal directions. Also you can enable the keyboard movement tool and use the mouse and WASD keys to move your cameras around like a FPS game