Somebody please tell me. I read the Poser Reference file and I still don't understand how to use Auto Balance (in Figure Menu) or what does it do...

Thank you!

What does it do? It messes up your figure and adds some useless junk to your cr2 and pz3 files.

Seriously, I think it's meant to keep the center of mass of the figure over the feet. Sort of keep the figure in ballance as you pose it.

if that's what it's supposed to do it makes a right pigs ear of it :$ I never use it because it makes posing really quite a lot harder than it needs to be

How to use it? load your figure, turn on Auto Balance, start posing. You should not normally need to move the CenterOfMass prop. Moving the CenterOfMass prop changes where Poser thinks the center of mass is. For example, supose your figure is carrying a heave weight in its left hand, Poser does not know that the thing in the left hand is heavy. You could shift the CenterOfMass prop to the left to make the balance more realistic.

@ FrankT,  I never use it  either!

It doesn't seem to do much more than IK.  You can get the same
effect by moving the Hip around with the feet IK'ed.  I suppose the
auto-balance does restrict the leg moves some, but with a little
common sense you can avoid physically impossible poses anyway.

Ok, thank you guys for the useful answers!

mervpaine

The only time I've found auto-balance to be any use is when I had a problem with a pose where the hip rot AND the abdomen rot had been changed (with IK on both feet). Auto-balance managed to bring the figure back into something more reasonable. Only ever happened the once, though..

Cheers,
Diolma

P.S. If you apply a pose from a Pose pallet whilst Auto Balance is turned on, nothing happens at first, when you click on a body part in the document window Auto Balance springs to life and your figure is balanced, if you are lucky, or twisted into some grotesque contortion if you are not. The final pose can be diffrent depending on which part you click on, in my limited experiance a foot is a good choice, the hip is a bad choice.

"in my limited experience a foot is a good choice"

:-)

A foot is probably as good as an inch or a yard..:-)

I use auto-balance as one of those "Let's see what happens..." buttons (hoping for a cheap laugh).
VERY occasionally I am surprised by something that actually works.

Cheers,
Diolma

hip rot and abdomen rot - that sounds painful :)

Auto balance is great... for comedy poses.  Yes, I use it on a daily basis.

"hip rot and abdomen rot - that sounds painful :)"

LOL!  Probably a reason to isolate everyone in the local area and ban all movements (especially for foot and mouth rot)..

Cheers,
Diolma

I thought auto-balance was intended to be used after a pose was finalized, as kind of a correction for impossible poses.  That's how I'vew tried to use it, in the past.  I don't recall that the results were so bad, but then my posing skills are pretty bad anyway, so maybe it could only improve things for me....

I'm gonna have to try using it while posing now, however....

@ Cage,

You may well be right that it is better to use Auto Balance only after the figure has been posed. To tell the truth I do not have much experience of using it.

Is it more use for animation? One thing to remember is that walking and running are a sort of controlled fall. They're dynamic balance, rather than static.