This will be the first (hopefully) of a series of tutorials regarding character poses. I have used a little character I have been working on - but it is a generic tutorial and will work for anything you might have made. This tutorial is especially useful when you are weighting your character. As you bend bones to check deformation you can simply click one button to make the character reset to your default pose.

The tutorial will make use of custom toolbars to make buttons to apply the poses. If you do not know how to do this, check out [ this tutorial ] which will explain all!

Introduction

This tutorial assumes you have a rigged character ready to be used. As said before it really doesnt matter what your skeleton setup is, it is the principal that is important! We will cover making a reset pose for a hand, once you understand the pose principal you can go on and make poses for your whole character.

Start

Make sure your character is in the position you wish to be the default pose:

BRANCH select (middle mouse click) the ROOT of the hand skeleton. Then click "Animate>Create>Skeleton>Store Skeleton Pose".

In the PPG that opens, name the pose "RtHandRESET" leave all the other parameters as default and click "OK".

This has now stored a pose called RtHandRESET that can be accessed from the Mixer folder in scene root. Make sure ALL NODEs is the view type.

Now we will make a button to apply this pose. Create a new tool bar and call it RESET.

[Click here] for a tutorial on how to do this.

Next, open the script window by pressing the button at the bottom of the display next to the playback control. Browse to the RtHandRESET pose as shown above:

"Scene Root>Mixer>Sources>Animation>RtHandRESET"

Single click it so it is highlighted. Then click "Animate>Create>SkeletonApply Skeleton Pose". This applies the reset pose but you will see no change as we have not moved the bones since saving the pose. In the script window, select the line of text that is created:

ApplyAction "Mixer.RtHandRESET", , False, 0, 0, False

Drop it into the toolbar and name the button "RESET RtHand"

Now you can move the bones around until you wish to reset the hand. Then simply click the reset button and hey presto!

[CLICK HERE] to see a demo video ( 4mb with DivX 5.30 )

There you go! So to produce different poses, just postion the character how you want, then follow the tutorial again. Always be sure to select the root of the chain you want the pose for - makes life easier...

Any questions? E-mail me at info@stevenwhite.net subject: basicweight I'll see if I can help!