I have been using the Face Camera script - found here for a while for billboards (tree pngs for example). Single surfaces work fine but is there a way for groups of surfaces to be orientated in the same manner?
See below for an example of the problem.
Hmm - I’ll have to think about that one - I suppose if the pieces are coplanar, and preferably grouped, it may be OK to rotate them together. I’ll take a look. For arbitrary selections though, it gets more complicated as there may not be am easily extractable plane from the objects so you’d need to ask the user or something…
-Pascal
i like…very cool script.
Thanks for sharing it!
Eike
Here is a version of @Pascal’s script modified to work with the groups. It will be up to you to make sure the objects in groups are coplanar and all of your billboards are grouped properly…
FaceCameraGroups.rvb (5.7 KB)
The easier way about it (and making the files lighter) would be to make your billboards into blocks and modify the script to work with blocks (and planar objects inside blocks) - if your libraries were prepared like that it could be a more elegant solution…
hth,
–jarek
@Jarek - merci!
-Pascal
Amazing, thanks Jarek!
Would it be complex to adapt this script for blocks?
Benjamin,
I made a version of the original @pascal’s script that will also allow you to use blocks (but not groups). It will use a random planar object from inside of your block for orientation, so again, up to you to use it with proper block instances. It is much faster and cleaner than groups. So with this one you can use a mix of surf, polysurf, meshes and blocks that contain any of the 3 (surf, polysurf and mesh).
FaceCameraBlocks.rvb (4.2 KB)
hth,
–jarek
Also nice old scripts are this - one for defining “face me” objects and one for aligning to camera. Advantage: the align command can be used during rendering an animation per bong and _BongoBonusToolForEachFrame.
@pascal Guys this is interesting why we couldn’t have auto facing picture to camera?
This is already done in Text. Horizontal to view checkbox launches exacly that behaviour why not to bring this option also for this kind of stuff?
Forgot to thank you for this script. Just dug it out again, very useful!
Cheers
Hi Jarek and Pascal and everyone else 
This is a great script!
But is it possible to make this work with hatches and curves inside a group/block?
I would like to be able to insert 2D trees (as a block or group), orient them to the camera, and then create a make2d drawing.
And like Przemyslaw Doliwa is saying the text function “horisontal to view” is already working very well in rhino and is “live/auto”, and in Lands design, the elevation view of the vegetation let the objects face to camera automatic.
But (how) is this possible in Rhino?
Lands design is very nice plugin for planting, but this function could be useful for silluettes and other etourage in the drawing
//Thomas
hi @toh,
I added support for curves (planar, closed) and hatches to the script, including curves and hatches inside block instances. Please note, if a block has some non-planar curves (like lines) it may not work properly. Groups are not supported.
A side note: over here Make2D doesn’t work with Hatches…
Here is the revised script: FaceCameraBlocks.rvb (4.9 KB)
Hi Jarek
Thanks a lot for this, and for your fast reply.
Much appreciated!
This is great 
Oh yeah, I did’nt realise this, until now. I guess i have to apply hatches afterwards, or if it a simple task/hatch, explode the hatches.
Is there anything like this for Rhino on Mac? Just had to switch to Mac for work reasons and am a bit shellshocked… worried about what I’ll miss out on between scripts, grasshopper plugins, etc… Not to mention rhino 8 on my new maxed-out work mac actually feels slightly clunkier, slower, and more limited than rhino 8 on even my more modest desktop… but that’s for another thread- Looking to see if this Face Camera script has a python equivalent… Thanks for the great software and the great tools!
hi @James29,
I am sure the script can be translated to Python and work on Mac but I don’t have that version available or ability to do it. Looks like you have no choice but probably you will miss out on some scripts and plugins floating around here as not everything can be ’ easily ’ translated to Rhino Python (that’s usually for larger scripts or the ones that use RhinoScript functions that don’t have Python equivalent available).
–jarek
