How to get an object in view of a fixed-location camera in an HDRI environment?

mikethe3dguy

I'm working with one of Dreamlight's Movie Maker Iray Metropolis products. These each have 50 HDRIs for different views of this large city block, with a camera dedicated to each HDRI. The cameras seem to be positioned all over the DS worldspace... often very far apart from each other. I need to get a car with a figure in it in front of that camera so I can position it properly in the HDRI "scene". My car is currently at 0, 0, 0. The camera is allegedly at -25006, -3115, 42589 and I can find it with the View: Frame button. I have no idea why these coordinates need to be so far from world center, but that's the product. When I move the car to those same coordinates, the camera is mysteriously somewhere else... not that its XYZ coordinates change or anything, but it's simply NOT at that location. It's parented to the camera group, but the coordinates for the group are 0, 0, 0.

I am mystified and have no idea how to get the car in view of the camera. Of course if I move the camera the shot with respect to the HDRI image will be messed up.

mikethe3dguy

Okay I actually managed to correct this. For some reason the camera I needed was physically moved from its original location. Probably my fault, but there are no instructions or even a ReadMe with these products (which is infuriating). Anyway I reloaded the set and started from scratch and was able to position things quickly.

Great product actually once you reverse engineer how it's supposed to work. For the life of me I can't figure out why there isn't a requirement by Daz for every store product to have at the minimum a ReadMe that describes where to find the files needed in DS, and for more complex products a simple 1-page set of instructions.