Although turning dials one at a time is good for precise adjustments, it's rather unwieldy to fully make poses with it. Feels very unintuitive and clumsy.

It seems to me, that it'd be a lot easier to do most of the work by dragging body parts to where I want them to be, and having poser do the numberwork.

I'm running into problems doing this, though I try dragging a hand to where I want it to be, and I'd like the arm to pose accordingly. But when I drag a hand around, the chest and stomach bends to accomodate it too, and the figure just ends up in odd positions.

So, I have two questions.

1. Is there any way to limit what joints are rotated when I move a body part around? For example, when dragging the left hand, I'd like only the hand, lower arm, upper arm, and shoulder to adjust. Not any of the trunk nodes.

2. Does anyone have some general advice on making posing easier? Little known tricks, alternate methods, etc. Short of using a motion capture suit, which I don't have and can't afford.

Just a guess, but I would suspect most folks try moving body parts by dragging them initially, but give it up and start using the dials pretty much exclusively (after getting more comfy with them) because of the unpredictability of trying to drag parts through 3D space.   As you point out, the problem is that in moving one part, you screw up everything attached to it.

So, I've really not done it in years, but no one else has answered yet, and a few things did come to mind, if you really do want to drag to pose:

• you can lock body parts you don't want to move (such as the chest in your example) from the pulldown menu (Objects -> Lock Actor).  

• Turn on "Use Limits" for the figure to keep joints from bending beyond natural limits.

-Switch to bounding box display for making major adjustments.  (display responds faster)

-Get familiar enough with the effects to know when to use or turn off Inverse Kinematics.  ( IMHO - Turning IK on, then using the dials to translate hands & feet is pretty close to the more natural sense you get by dragging bodyparts)

-Collect pre-made pose sets for a decade as starting points. ;-)

A: Yes there is. Its the little used or discussed "Chain Break". When you use the Translate/Pull tool, poser uses a kind of temporary IK to affect a number or actors by the dragging. Applying  Chain Break to an actor will will break this IK chain for the actor it is applied to, and stop the IK effect propagating to, or past,  this actor. It's different from locking an actor. If I lock the collar, the IK effect of dragging the forearm will still propagate through the collar and chest, and end up bending the abdomen. If I use Chain Break the effect won't propagate through the collar.

The Chain Break Tool, is in the Editing Tools pallet. Read the Poser manual for more details.

Q: 2. Does anyone have some general advice on making posing easier? Little known tricks, alternate methods, etc. Short of using a motion capture suit, which I don't have and can't afford.

A: Yes, ask a good friend to help you. Get him or her to stand behind you with a cricket bat. Instruct the friend that every time you touch the Translate/Pull tool, or the Translate In/Out tool, they are to hit you over the head with the bat. If your friend seems reluctant to do this, bribe him or her with offers of free beer or sex, which ever seems the most appropriate. After a few ten's of hours of this treatment a thought will start to dawn in your consciousness  "NEVER TOUCH THE TRANSLATE TOOL". It is said that the blessed Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama the Sammasambuddha, had such a moment sitting under a fig tree (though it is lost to history which Poser version he was using).

To put it another way, my advice is; don't use the T/P or I/O tools to pose a figure. Only use the Rotate or Twist tool, or the dials. Forget about the Chain Break mentioned in my last post. The Rotate and Twist tools only act on the selected part of the figure, they give you better and more accurate control. If you only use the Rotate and Twist tools, you will never need the Chain Break. Any way, that's my five cents worth (inflation!).

Thank you Les. I never use translate anyway because the progam I'm making anims (second life) for doesn't support scaling or translation in animations, only joint rotations.

Oh, wait, I do use translate on the hip, to actually move the whole figure, for the likes of jumping animations. that's ok, isn't it ?

Wouldn't it be better to use translate on the body instead of the hip? The end result is the same, but I'm not sure how either translate to a pose in second life.

Quote - Oh, wait, I do use translate on the hip, to actually move the whole figure, for the likes of jumping animations. that's ok, isn't it ?

Yes, it's OK to use the Translate tool on the hip or Body actors to position the figures. I should have pointed that out. What I meant was don't use them to make the general pose, just for positioning the figure in the scene. Any way, that' just my opinion, do it what ever way works best for you.

Like Gareee, I have no idea how any of this stuff translates to second life. In general, in Poser for static poses you should set the X and Z translations of the figure in the Body. If you do it that way, when you save a pose, the pose can be used with the figure in any location in the scene, and when you apply the pose it won't make the figure jump to a new location, as would happen if you had set the translation in the hip. This is because Poser does not save pose data for the Body actor (I think P7 has an option to do that).

One exception to this rule of thumb is when you are saving poses for a pair of characters, and they must take up an exact location relative to each other. Another exception is in animated poses where the figure location needs to change over time. I that case you need to implement  the translations in the hip. Again, this is because Poser does not save pose data for the Body actor, and in this case you need the location data to be stored in the pose file.

Y translate is a different matter. In general yTran should be set in the hip. This is because the rest of the pose (e.g. the amount of bend at the knees) will determine what yTran is needed to place the feet (or what ever) on the floor. Unlike X or Z tran, it is necessary that this yTran data be stored in the pose file so that applying the pose puts the feet on the ground. This system may be a bit hard to get used to, but I find that it pays dividends in the long run, especially if you save and use a lot of poses.

I don't know about the Body actor. Never tried using that actually. Second Life uses the .bvh format, and it ignores all scale data, and all position data except for the root joint, which is the hip.

wark, do what the others said.  dragging the feet into position is a real time-saver
when doing a stair-climbing animation IMVHO, but I understand their antipathy
towards the function in general, as it's rather dodgy in most cases.

"Posing by dragging parts", IMHO, is like trying to do a fine oil painting with room painting brushes.

If you use body lock poses, then the translate tool isn't so bad.  Not that I use it myself - I use the body locks to combine poses.  I'll see one pose in my library that works for one part of the figure, apply it, then lock the parts I want to keep that way and use other poses for the other parts.

I forget where to find the lock poses (actually I think they're cameras, for some odd reason), but the folder I have them stored in is labeled 3DA P4 Bodylocks.  It's been so long now, I can't remember if I had to edit them to make them work with P7, V4, etc., so YMMV.

I think theres a lot to be said for dragging parts  with the  maintain balance feature active on the figure.......that is ,  **if ** you drag very slightly and carefully.....you can get some very realistic full body  adjustments  that look very very much more realistic  then I would have thought to do from my own imagination....Once again, it depends on your application though! this is totally not a precise  posing method  , so if you want precision, forget this.   But if you want free flowing and very dynamic movements that will result in seriously realistic looking animation   - trust me it rocks.

Quote - bribe him or her with offers of free beer or sex

You may find that the free beer leads to fewer complications in the long term.

Mike