For the posing through the Collie Tools, there are two tags and one dialog. One of the tags (the Pose Joint Tag) defines an object's coordinate system as joint and decides what axis is stored with a pose. The other tag (Pose Storage Tag) stores whole lists of poses. The dialog finally shows that list of poses which is contained in the currently selected pose storage tag.
Pose
Joint Tag
Pose
Storage Tag
Open
Pose Dialog
First, assign a pose joint tag to each joint (that means, to that object in the hierarchy which is supposed to move relative to its parent). In the settings of the pose joint tag, you can select which of the nine transformations (translation, rotation, and scaling in three axes each) are supposed to be stored with a pose. Assign a unique name to the joint. In the hierarchy that is supposed to be posed, no two joints with identical names must exist, not even as children of different parent objects! That is necessary because hierarchical dependencies are not part of the pose - only the joint's name and the current values are noted. This is the only way to make the posing work despite of later modifications of the model.
In this screenshot, all rotations (Rot) for the joint "HipRight" are recorded, but neither translations (Trans) nor scaling (Scale).
As second step, add a pose storage tag to the first parent object of the posed hierarchy. (The tag can be added anywhere, but this is the most practical position.) The pose storage tag stores a recorded list of poses. It needs the pose dialog to be useful, because the dialog shows its list and offers buttons to record and apply a pose. The attributes of the pose storage tag itself show only five buttons (apart from the tag's name), four of which are meant for communication with the pose dialog. (The fifth button deletes the contents of the tag.)
Normally, you will not need these buttons. The pose dialog is automatically linked to the selected pose storage tag.
Your object hierarchy should now look like this (use the demo scene posing.c4d as an example):
As you can see, while this kind of posing has been designed for mechanical models, it can be applied to any kind of model. Bones can be defined as joints as well, if you like.
As final step, you open the pose dialog. We recommend to embed the dialog into the layout (in a tab with other dialogs if there is no more room on the workbench), so that it is always ready to be accessed.
In this example, five poses (again, from the sample scene) have already been recorded. A comment can be added to each pose. The buttons will be explained in the next step.