Good morning all :) Well, I think I have everything else down but posing. It seems no matter how hard I try, I cannot get my poses to look natural and un-painful. LOL Even if I am using poses that are for V2 I get unsightly results. I have tried almost every pose I have with limits on, with limits off and I just cant seem to get it right. Does anyone have any good tips for posing figures? TIA, Annette

Always turn IK off. And make sure you have the BODY selected. Then poses should work :o)

You know there are lots of places that sell their poses, and I would suggest you might think about some of them, they save time and are amazingly done, right down to the fingers. Sharen Places, what places: LOL...here PoserPro BBay Schabbler Lisa B All excellentai!

I just might try buying some poses. I have been using free poses but maybe its time to try something different. Thanks :) Hmmmm I checked out my settings for IK and left and right leg are both checked, so I should uncheck them? The problem is more with the arms tho'....

See the posing tutorial I did at DAZ Arcana for tips on realistic posing. -3Don

Ok thanks Don, I will go look.

Don, I cant find your tutorial, all I see there is a tut for animated rain in Bryce, am I looking in the right place?

While it does not always work because of the mathematics involved in creating poses, one way to work on posing is to use a live model to produce the positions you are interested in. Start your live model off in the fundamental poser position (somewhat near anatomical position) and then have them move to the pose you are interested in. As they make each move do the same with your poser model. After some tinkering you'll figure out how to get the poses you want Good luck.

Actually, you always have a live model around: yourself! On posing arms, I find it helpful to move the Collars first, and then the Forearms, with less emphasis on the Shoulders. You can reach most real poses easier with the Collar than the Shoulder. This isn't quite natural, because we -consciously- move the humerus (Poser's Shoulder), not the scapula. But in Poser it usually works best to concentrate on the Collar.

Here are things I do when I make my poses: 1. Get a good book on art composition. Some of the How To Draw Comics books are good reference. They have tons of good advice on how to make a scene and pose interesting art and this directly applies to poser. Also grab some well done comic books and see what they do. They definitly don't look like family picture albums. 2. Break up symetry. No part of the left half should reflect the right half. 3. Poser everything. There should be no unposed hands, fingers, eyes etc. I cringe everytime I see a render and the figure is standing in stock arms out pose with sprayed fingers and glaring straight on eye stares. If you have a wig with posing MTs use them. Sway the hair. 4. Break the center line. Imagine there is a center line down the middle of your figure. Depending on mood, action etc, the body should never stack up on this center line but balance across it. For example, a standing pose should have the hips sway off center to the left, then the abs to the right, then the chest and bit to the left then the head back over. Weigh this in your mind. The amount of mass on the left should equal the amount on the right for a balanced figure. For a dynamic figure you want to throw this ratio off, usually in the direction of action. A punch thrower is going to be off center in the direction of the punch etc. 5. Avoid parallels at all times. This means no associated parts should ever be aligned. The forearm should never be straight with the shoulder. The abdomen should never be straight with the hips. Legs should never be straight. The neck/head combo should never be linear. 6. You have tons of facial dials, use them. The left half of the face should never mirror the right. One eyebrow should always be off from the other. One eye should always be more or less open. One lip side should be more or less curled. No human is perfect, only mannequins are symetrical. 7. Don't be afraid of foreshortening. This is where you bend or bring the figure into the 3rd dimension relative to the camera. Bend the figure toward the camera a bit. Point an arm forward. A lot of poses I see only work in two dimensions like the figure is on a sheet of paper. Don't be afraid to have a tilted forward head or chest or leg. 8. I use a technique I call the reversed head. Basically, depending on drama the head is more or less turned away from whereever the eyes are aimed. For example, a frightened person will look at the scary object with their eyes but turn their head as far away as possible. This increases drama for the head and eyes. 9. Pose the eyes. The more eye aiming you do the better. I make a simple prop a child of the head, aim the eyes at the prop then use the prop to point the eyes. It works great and makes eye aiming a breeze. No eye should ever be pointed straight. 10. Camera angles and composition are also key to good poses and scenes. You can have the most dramatic pose in the world but it'll look dull as hell if you set up your camera and scene like you're taking a family photo. Don't center everything. Don't try and get every strand of hair or toe in the shot. Tilt the camera sideways. Use top and worm eye shots. The camera should never be striaght on or balanced. There should always be some tilt or role. Again, look at comics. They don't do family photo shots. They tilt the angles, do odd perspectives etc. 11. Focus on what's needed to be shown. So what you got some cool set. If its not required for the shot, don't try and pan back and include it. Again, don't take vacation photos, take action shots. Hope that helps

So start at the collars? Sounds easy enough. I guess I just find those darn seams popping up everywhere and when I try to fix one problem, I create another LOL! I am going to get an example of what I mean. I just tried doing a sitting pose and it actually turned out a little better than some. I will post it in a sec.

Oh and one more nifty trick I do. When you have your pose all set, use the + tool (the IK tool) and grab an applicable arm or leg or the head and give the figure a slight yank in the direction of action. You don't need the IK turned on to do this. This will cause a more natural flow across the figure. For example, if you pose a punch thrower no matter how well you do it, the figure will probably still look a bit static. Now grab the punching arm and pull the figure slightly in the direct of the punch and all the linked parts will slightly line up in unisen giving a better appearance of flow across the figure.

The only fix I've found for the armpit thing is postwork ;-)

Wow, those are all great tips to consider, I will have to break out my notebook and start taking notes!! Seriously though. That really helps a lot. I have noticed that the camera does really help a lot and sometimes even the lights that are used. I see what u are saying though about the different angles and such, I guess I need to start being a little more versatile (SP?) in my posing.

Ya know, I was thinking the same thing. Postwork for the armpits but that hand is just sad looking. LOL

I had a similar problem with kids animated on seesaw - try adjusting the chest forward. Worked for me with no seams busting but I had to actually sit on a seesaw 'fore I figured out that my chest leaned forward ;-) [now that was funny - to see 45 year old woman on neighborhood kids teeney seesaw]

Poser 4 Pro Pack FX & Design offers a lot of good posing tips and has useful information of lighting, texturing and animations too. You might want check it out. If you don't have Pro Pack or have Poser 5 there is still a lot of useful information.

I recently discovered a great resource for posing and drawing reference. You don't have to be online to access them, and they're cheap. :)

Visual Reference for Comic Artists, Vol I and II on CD.

The CD's do not contain nudity, so they're safe for your kids to find. His site has a very limited list of places to purchase them, but personally I've gotten mine from BudPlant (NOTE: They do sell some adult material, so the link may contain nudity, but not unless you go looking for it), they're in California but they ship anywhere Internationally. (The CD-ROM's are $10 each.) Plus they're an actual walk-in store and not owned by a mega-corporation, kinda rare these days!

Have fun!

-Molly

What everyone else has said, plus... When I have the figure pretty much there, I turn on the IK all around, then grab the hip and yank it around a bit. A couple of scale inches does it, no need to get extreme. I do that from a couple or three different viewing angles. Playing with the rotate dials in all three planes also helps, again just a bit. The object is to get rid of any zero settings or symmetry that may be left after the main posing work and get some randomness into it. The difference before and after is small but the after is a lot more natural looking. The advice about tweaking face morphs is key. Again, it doesn't have to be a lot, just enough to get rid of the default mannequin zombie look. When turning the head, tilt it a bit as well. Spread the turn and tilt across the head and both neck parts -- that's why the Vickie neck has two parts. If the head turn is more than five or (at most) ten degrees, turn and tilt the chest and shoulders as well. The farther from dead ahead, the farther down the chain of body parts you need to do that. Likewise for most other motions -- the farther a hand reaches out, the more body parts reach along with it. Like, "the knee bone's connected to the..." When reaching, move one or more opposite side limb(s) the other way to balance. The advice about shifting body parts off the vertical center line applies even when the pose is meant to look centered and symmetrical. Half a scale inch here and three degrees there makes a big difference towards realism. For a soldier standing at attention, make that an eighth of an inch here and one degree there, but make it something other than zero. Do the rotate dial in each of the three planes for the part. Pose yourself and notice that the farther you depart from the default Poser pose the more you have to work at staying there. The figure should reflect that. Best of all the advice in this thread: pose yourself first and FEEL the pose, don't just look at it.