How to keep the eye focus while head moves ?

Hi;

I just have created a video tutorial where my avi looks right into the camera and tell a story. I am using the standard stand animation, so the avatar moves slightly. This is exactlywhat i want. But...

The avatar eyes also move and so they look to the camera for a while, then they look slightly away just to return back to the camera focus a few seconds later. This "behaviour" is very bad because as soon as the "eye contact" to the viewer is lost, the concentration to the spoken voice gets massively disturbed.

This is the tutorial i refer to: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2009/09/23/from-plane-to-cube-with-no-effort/

The effect happens at:

0:52-0:54 (once)
3:48-4:14 (massively)

Now i am looking for a way to keep the eyes focussed on the camera even if the head moves slightly. I have already used the camera focus (ALT-left mouse) to keep the avatar facing the camera, but that does not seem to be enough.

Do i need to find a special "stand" animation whithough eye movement (where could i find such?) or is there another trick i can use ? Maybe there is a parameter for this in the debug options ?

Thanks for any hint!

First, wow, great video Gaia! I once experimented with making a sculptie cube using a shrinkwrap modifier--which came out great--but, it had the poles, whereas yours didn't

Second, I personally didn't find the eye movement distracting at all; but, I understand wanting to make things as perfectly as possible and as we imagine....

That said, usually in sl photography when one wants the model's eyes to point in a certain direction, they have the avatar cam focus on a simple prim out of the camera's view. Unless the model moves their focus point, their eyes will stay pointed right at that prim.

So, maybe you can experiment with rezzing a prim between you and the camera, focusing on it, turning the prim transparent and shoot your scene?

As far as I know, too, there is no animation that will control avatar eye position.

You could try covering the standard avatar eyes with prim eyes, not attached to the eyes.

I wish you would post more. <3

Could "Look at last chatterer" help?

I'm *really* trying hard to break 50 posts in 2.5 years of lurking before the flog assimilation

*starts to break a sweat*

and ty <3

Thank you all for your replies.

The best option for me was what Autumn suggested: to focus on a transparent object and then do the filming. Indeed i was already working like this, but then i needed the avatar head to rotate and that was the moment where the avatar lost focus and the eyes started to get a bit nervous I finally found a way to do it as i need it. it is a bit tricky though:

- I create an object, which i make my avatar to look at.
- then i tell the object to move to another location.
- The avatar eyes will follow that object.

The camera is fully detached from what my avatar does. So now i can predefine how fast the head moves and from where to where the eyes move. And that is exactly what i need
It is just another helper tool for more precise movie making

I seem to recall that the Emerald viewer has the option to disable "look at" and ends up locking the avatar eyes in place so they never move. Maybe that would help.