How to make my G8F's eyes look in the correct direction

Magic Dragon 3D

Hey guys! Perhaps this has already been clarified in older threads on this forum, but I'm having some difficulties getting the eyes of my two G8F characters to look in the correct direction!

A few days ago I started a new mini comic series involving Abby and Ellie from The Last Of Us Part II (both are Daz3D wrap characters based on Genesis 8 Female). And one of the scenes I rendered, Abby sneakily grabs Ellie from behind and Abby's eyes should be looking up at Ellie with a "malicious" expression, and Ellie's eyes should be down looking at Abby's pistol with a fearful expression. The problem occurs that Abby and Ellie's eyes appear to be fine in the Texture Shaded view, but when I activate the Iray view or render the entire scene, Abby and Ellie's eyes look strange, as if Abby were looking "into space" and Ellie's eyes are not as low looking at Abby's pistol as they should be in the Texture Shading view. How can I fix this?

Richard Haseltine

If you render using the Active Viewport size preset and then overlay the render and a screenshot of the Vewport (File>Dave last Draw) are the eyes moving or is it a chnage in the lighting making them look different?

SofaCitizen

Personally, I would always use Look At Me II Pose Control for doing stuff that. However, it's currently sitting at full price right now so you may want to pop it in your wishlist and see if a promo/discount comes along soon to drop the price a little.

In the meantime you can try clicking each eye and using the "Point at" option in parameters to direct it at the area you want them to look at (e.g. the other character's eye). If it still looks a bit wrong you can try creating a null object in the scene and "Point at" both of a characters eyes at it - then you can move that null about until you have them looking in the direction you want.

Magic Dragon 3D

Richard Haseltine said:

If you render using the Active Viewport size preset and then overlay the render and a screenshot of the Vewport (File>Dave last Draw) are the eyes moving or is it a chnage in the lighting making them look different?

I'm at work right now and I don't have access to my computer with Daz, but I noticed that in both Viewport View and Camera View, Abby and Ellie's eyes look fine, but when I render them in camera view, the eyes look strange, without life. Could this be because of the lighting or some adjustment I'm missing here? 

Magic Dragon 3D

SofaCitizen said:

Personally, I would always use Look At Me II Pose Control for doing stuff that. However, it's currently sitting at full price right now so you may want to pop it in your wishlist and see if a promo/discount comes along soon to drop the price a little.

In the meantime you can try clicking each eye and using the "Point at" option in parameters to direct it at the area you want them to look at (e.g. the other character's eye). If it still looks a bit wrong you can try creating a null object in the scene and "Point at" both of a characters eyes at it - then you can move that null about until you have them looking in the direction you want.

 Cool! I had already heard of some plugins that make characters eyes look more realistic and correct. I'll look more into this "Look At Me Pose Control" plugin to understand how it works, but perhaps the "Point At" option is a quick way to fix that as you said before.

Elor

If you don't know about it, another way to pose the eyes is using the Powerpose tab: if it's not visible in Daz UI, you can access it by going into Windows > Panels (Tab) then chosing Powerpose. I don't remember having eyes not looking were I wanted using it.

With a character selected, if you click on the head, you will have access to the head controls, and among them, clicking on the yellow dot shown on the screenshot bellow, will give you control of both eyes at once, making posing them easy (it's best to be using the Node selection tool when you're doing it: it has the benefit of not adding the green/blue/red controls on the eyes, otherwise, the eyes may be hidden by these controls).

Magic Dragon 3D

Elor said:

If you don't know about it, another way to pose the eyes is using the Powerpose tab: if it's not visible in Daz UI, you can access it by going into Windows > Panels (Tab) then chosing Powerpose. I don't remember having eyes not looking were I wanted using it.

With a character selected, if you click on the head, you will have access to the head controls, and among them, clicking on the yellow dot shown on the screenshot bellow, will give you control of both eyes at once, making posing them easy (it's best to be using the Node selection tool when you're doing it: it has the benefit of not adding the green/blue/red controls on the eyes, otherwise, the eyes may be hidden by these controls).

Wonderful! I didn't know there was such an option within Daz hahaha. As the saying goes: "living and learning!" Thanks for the tip! I'll test it on the two G8F characters and see how the final result goes.