Object Follow Camera?

I know it’s been discussed before, but I am curious to see if anyone has made any progress on a way to have objects always follow the camera (similar to how dimension text always does)?

Hi Landscraper,

On this page: http://wiki.mcneel.com/people/pascalgolay
find the script FaceCamera. maybe that is (partially) what you need?

-Willem

Thanks Willem,

That is basically the feature I am talking about with the key exception that FaceCamera does not dynamically follow the camera. You have to run the script each time you move the camera.

If you’re familiar with Sketchup, it has the feature with its planar people and trees that dynamically follow the camera as you move around.

I can imagine such a feature yet I have never heard of that type of functionality inside Rhino.

_Willem

Rhino can use RPC files for this. The command is just RPC. You need to have RPC content https://www.archvision.com/rpccontent/people to use.

They’re called Face Me components in SketchUp (and you can make any component into a Face Me just by checking a box when you create the component). And they’re essential. People - trees, anything that you need to be looking at the camera as you change position. I’m doing a lot of work in retail display and mannequins become a problem - if they’re 3D the model becomes too heavy, but if they’re 2D shapes I have to turn 30 to 40 items every time I move the camera. Making them into Face Me components solves that problem.

Plugin anyone?

1 Like

Yes - exactly! I haven’t had any luck finding a solution.

This was called “billboard” in most game engines back in the days. They could be either fully facing the camera or face the camera, but keep the Z axis as a 3D axis. (so you cold walk under a tree or look down on people)

Will this be possible in version 7?

Hello - this will not be a feature in V 7 , no.

-Pascal

i think this could be achieved with some script combined with names selection. you male named selectiom of objects you want to face the camera and tell them to rotate somehow

It’s really a pity that this simple and old feature of SU doesn’t find a way to Rhino. For rendering and direct Rhino screen presentation it could be a nice tool.

If someone need a script solution - this one allow to predefine, which objects should be turned.

You can try the Bubalus_GH plugin:https://www.food4rhino.com/app/bubalusgh
**component:**GeometryFaceToCamera

om/app/bubalusgh

1 Like

Looks good, unfortunately GH would be a new tool to learn for this basic function. :wink:

Any update on this? Is the above GH solution still the best option?

In other software I’ve used, there would be an option in the object properties that you could check for “normals face camera” or something along those lines. I’d love to see Rhino have this feature.

Hi Marc -

The feature request is on our list as RH-32008 Making Picture objects always face the camera
-wim

1 Like

Hi Marc - I don’t know if it is really any more useful but just in case, this thing faces selected objects to the camera when asked - that is, it does not keep up with the camera, but it seems to work OK as far as it goes.

FaceCamera
RefreshFaceCamera - once an object is set to face camera, it will be refreshed to the current camera without selection.

There are a couple of semi-related commands in this plug-in -
TargetLights - directs selected lights to a point in space
LevelUpRectangularLight - does that… for when they get all skewed.

FaceCamera.rhp (34.5 KB)

-Pascal

3 Likes

Thank you Pascal! This works wonderfully! There is one issue though… after the command is run, the mapping on the object is stretched/skewed. Luckily, I’m only using the script for a few objects, so re-mapping them doesn’t take long, but if there are dozens of objects in a scene, it could be a problem (unless they are all assigned to a single layer and selected at the same time… but sometimes people aren’t this organized haha).

I’ve attached a file in case you’d like to dig more into it, but again, totally not necessary, what you’ve sent has definitely helped!

thanks!
face camera test.3dm (6.3 MB)

Hi Marc - I see, yes, thanks - I’ll see if I can fix that - the planar mapping does not get updated. Also, refreshing seems to fail on this, I guess I have some work to do…

@Marc_Roberts - I fixed the updating with RefreshFaceCamera, updated above … the mapping thing will take some more investigation.

@Marc_Roberts - updated again above, I think the mapping problem is solved - ones that are already messed up will need to be remapped but this should fix any new ‘FaceCameras’ Thanks for pointing that out.

-Pascal

1 Like

works like a charm! thank you x1000!