turning my avatar

I am looking at myself from a camera view a few feet away. I have my back to the camera. How do I turm myself around to face the camera?

I can do it by clicking on myself, turning, then repositioning the camera again. Is there a simper way ?

Oxy

you have your camera controls on your screen right?

Hit alt and right or left arrow key, it will spin the camera around.

Wow - one of these days I really do need to become more familiar with all of the various ways of accomplishing the same thing. Thanks for this tidbit.

Techinically you can't turn yoursef around to face the camera......you have to use camera controls to move around yourself. Like, the camera is the earth, and you are the sun. LOL

The easiest way is just hold alt while your mouse is centered on you.....then use your arrow keys to pan around 360 degrees. You can also zoom in or out with the forward/back arrows....or your mouse wheel.......AND you can use you up/down keys to 'angle' the camera up or down.

But, technically you cannot actually 'turn around' and face the camera.

Just remember......Earth.....Sun.... keep those physics in mind and you'll be all set.

Alt + Left click will spin the camera laterally. Alt + Left click anywhere (including avatars) will set the center point for rotation.

Alt + Ctrl + Left click will do the same, except it works vertically.

Alt-zoom mousewheel can be used to zoom into objects.

Build menu Focus tool has a zoom slider

View> Camera Controls provides an on screen clickable camera interface.

Control + 8 = Increase FOV (fisheye)

Control + 9 = Reset camera

Control + 0 = Telephoto

Click on avatar and mouse around will look around and show your avatar looking around. (If flying this only steers the avatar)

Camera resets when avatar moves. The assumption is that you want to see / know where you are going.

Control-alt-arrow keys rotate up down and around an object

Alt-arrow keys pan right, left and zoom in and out

While Avatar is sitting = Alt+Page up / Page Down will pan, arrow keys to look around.

Mouselook= Camera will take orientation of the avatar. This feature helps make vehicles more compelling.

Wow, Eva, thanks! Many of those I didn't know about.

Not sure it's "simpler" but there are scripted objects that do kind of what's being asked here. I'm sure one of the various cam scripts that Torley distributes must do it, as does a "mirror cam" setting of my freebie CamCast Receiver, and no doubt many others.

What these things do is point the cam at the avatar from a fixed location and then keep focus on the avatar from that location, tracking as the avatar moves around. That way you can watch while walking away from the cam, turning, and walking back toward it, for example.

There is also a cool bug in the Viewer that will leave the camera in a fixed orientation while the avatar moves around. So you see a birds eye view of yourself as you walk around, turning and everything. The camera continues to track your avatar.

It happens fairly often. I think it has something to do with switching between applications: when the Viewer gets focus again it tries to check something about the camera and gets confused.

I wish there was an option to make it happen on purpose - I really like that view sometimes!

SL seriously needs an ability to simply flip the camera and look at yourself from in front...

IM me for a trivial little HUD I call "freezeview" that lets you do this whenever you want.

Click HUDlet to freeze view. You can still cam around. Whenever you hit escape or move, camera goes to whatever view when you froze the view. Click it again to unlock the view. Some things cause the view to get unfrozen (e.g., relog), but the HUD doesn't know, so you click and it says "view unfrozen". Click again to freeze.

Is it possible to set the camera some distance in front of yourself, and walk towards it, so you see yourself coming towards the camera?

Rock

Yes, hold down the down arrow key. You will walk towards cam.

The behavior of the down arrow key depends on your AO, if you use one. I don't remember which way it is, but depending on whether my ZHAO II AO is on or off, one way I walk backwards, the other way I turn around and walk towards the camera.