Posing

The Pose Dialog

The most important thing to know about the pose dialog is hidden behind the small checkbox "Automatic Update". If that box is checked, the dialog will connect to the currently selected pose storage tag - the content of the tag is copied to the list field of the dialog, and the dialog's list is written back to the tag at every change.It will appear as if the dialog always shows the pose list of the tag. This is the (useful) default.

You should switch off this feature only when you want to copy poses from one pose storage tag to another. If the automatic update is not active, the dialog will no longer synchronize with a selected tag - and the list shown by the dialog will not be stored with the scene any more! We will return to that issue later. For now, just keep the standard setting.

The list field will now show the pose list of the tag. It is just a simple list with no hierarchy of subitems. If you need a grouping of poses, you can assign more than one pose storage tags, for example "SittingPoses", "StandingPoses" and "LyingPoses". That is also recommended for better overview. In theory, a list can hold any number of poses, but with more than a few dozen items in one list, things may get chaotic pretty quickly.

Click once on a pose to select it. Double clicking will apply the pose!

The (non-editable) commentary field shows your comment for the selected pose. Unfortunately, the posing of the Collie Tools does not have a nice preview like MOCCA's own pose manager, but considering that it has been designed to store poses in changeable models, this would not make as much sense anyway.

With the buttons Up and Down you can move the selected pose in the list and manually sort the list. Rename allows changing of the pose's name and comment. Delete deletes the selected pose.

Below the buttons, you will find the recording area of the dialog. Get Pose and Apply Pose are self-explaining. The latter is the same function that is called when you double-click a pose in the list field.

By using the input field Constrain to you can select Named Structures. If you haven't read that chapter of the manual by now, you should now study it, because that functionality is one of the most powerful in the Collie Tools. You can work with it as you would with layers - e.g. by entering "Arm" in the constraint field, recording and application of a pose will then be limited to just the arms of the figure (because arms have a Named Structure tag). You can use the full power of the Named Structures as well and utilize expressions like "(Left & Arm) | (Right & Leg)" - this example limits the poses to the left arm and the right leg.

Constraints work both ways. If you set a constraint when you record a pose, only those joints are considered which are part of that Named Structure. Other joints are not recorded in that pose. That means, when you apply this pose later, only the recorded joints will be applied even if you set no constraints at application time. Of course, because the information for the other joints has never been recorded in the pose.

If the constraint is set at application time instead, the pose may have the information for other joints, but it is ignored by the application algorithm.

Recording a pose

To start the recording, you select the figure (or, in the most general case, the "root" object of the hierarchy you want to record). Then you select the appropriate pose storage tag (if you are using the recommendations here, the tag is assigned to that very object). The pose list of the tag is shown in the dialog. Click on Get Pose. A new dialog appears where you can enter name and comment of the pose. After entering that data, the pose will appear under this name in the list. All done.

Pose the joints of the figure in another way. (While you are working on another tag or object, the pose list may disappear from the dialog, but that should not bother you.) Select the root object and the pose storage tag again, and click on Get Pose once more to record this pose.

Double click on the pose entries to switch between the recordings. As you can see, the principle is really simple despite the lengthy explanations.

   

   

You can now try to modify the figure, for example by switching "HipRight" and "HipLeft" in the hierarchie, or by adding a face or a backpack to the little guy. You can even link the legs to the head. The Collie Tools will not bother as long as the pose joint tags are still part of the object (the little guy on the other hand may object to having its anatomy creatively modified).

What happens when you remove a leg completely? Even then the poses will still work - without that leg of course. If you re-add the leg, the poses will be complete again, as long as the joints still bear their original name.

Warning: You should always remember to select the root object when recording or applying a pose! The poses can be limited by selecting a different object. Each recording and application starts at the selected object as root! If your object selection is still set to "HipLeft", only the left leg will be recorded (in addition to the limits that are set by the Named Structure constraints).

Why does this happen? This is a feature by design. It allows applying a pose "partially" even without adding Named Structures. It also makes possible to apply the pose list of one object to a different object (for example if you have several little figures in your scene). And finally, it keeps the pose storage tags independently of the posed object. If, for example, you have recorded several hundred poses for a character, just grouping them by using different pose storage tags will not suffice. You will need to create a hierarchy of pose lists to be able to manage that many poses. In that case, you can create a tree of properly named null objects in the object manager, and store the pose storage tags there. If the tag would automatically apply its poses to just its own object as root, this would not be possible.

Here is an example of a null hierarchy to store pose storage tags:

(There is a technical reason as well: The list of poses in the dialog is only connected to the tag by the "Automatic Update". If you switch off that feature, the dialog will immediately forget what tag the poses come from, and thus also forget the object they must be applied to. By explicitly selecting the object that must be posed (or which pose must be recorded), the dialog will work properly even without "Automatic Update".)

With these instructions, you can try recording and applying poses as you like.

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