Pose Saver

[digitalhyper]

I don't know if this is available somewhere yet, but what about a pose saver? For example, I've used a tool called Sal Pose Manager, found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/1665973 ... se-Manager for 3DS Max. It's nice, because you can pose a character and save it. You can then click the button on the pose you saved and it'll load that pose for your character quickly. Just a thought.. would be nice.

[Greenlaw]

Sorry, I can't see that link from work but I believe you're describing what the Actions panel does.

You can use the Actions panel to save the keyframed state of a selection (a 'pose' for example) at any frame as a 'Regular' Action, and then apply the Action (pose) using either of the two Insert buttons to the selection on another frame. Used this way, it's like a copy/paste list but it can also reference keys from the original selection.

(This panel does a lot of other useful things too.)

G.

[digitalhyper]

Hey Greenlaw,

Thanks for the response, I'll have to check that out. I'm always using smartbones, but never thought about that. So, would I just pose the character and select all the bones and hit save action and give it a name? I'm assuming it'll put itself under the regular tab?

[Greenlaw]

Something like that. I tried the feature out a long time ago when I was just starting out, and I just tried it again the other day to double-check for myself.

Note that there are two buttons for inserting an Action to your timeline: the first one inserts the Action like a Paste command, and the second one will insert a reference to the original keyframes. This works with a single frame pose or an animation (like a cycle).

I have to admit, I don't typically used Actions for pose saving. If I need to copy keyframes, I typically just copy and paste them directly on the timeline or between documents. There was quite a lot of that going on, as you might imagine, back when I was animating Scareplane.

But if I was creating an on-going series with recurring characters then, yeah, I would look into using Actions for common poses. Hopefully, somebody with more experience in this area can offer better details and some tips you might need to be aware of. (I'd like to know more too.)

G.

[chucky]

You can use actions for any pose or even things like blinks. Because the actions can layer over others that are not using the same channels you can have for example a walk action that included the arms and another that does not. You could have a hands on hips pose ( whatever) and layer that over the walk.
You could make various repeatable facial expressions and just drop them in .
Actions make for a very fast workflow, and they transfer when dragging layers into other projects..

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for your input Chucky.

I have to confess, I keep neglecting regular Actions but I really should keep this feature in mind especially after completing rig motion tests. It's silly not to embed the test motions, cycles and poses into the Actions list before sending these rigs into production.

I think I'll play around with this a bit today.

G.