Posing Characters

Proximity grab a puppet and you can move specific body parts to create poses.

For a humanoid, there are body parts to represent the following bones in the skeleton:

• Chest

  • Head

  • Bicep (Upper Arm)

    • Forearm (Lower Arm)

      • Hand

  • Thigh (Upper Leg)

    • Calf (Lower Leg)

      • Foot

To pose a puppet, with the Grabber selected:

• Move your hand into the puppet until a body part is highlighted in yellow.

• Press and hold the Trigger to grab the body part and move it, then release to set that position.

Pose the body parts down the bone hierarchy to avoid having to re-pose body parts that can be affected by the movement of body parts further up the hierarchy. E.g/, Move the chest first to create the rough pose, then the bicep, then the forearm, and finally the hand.

Fingers

You can pose fingers the same way. It can be helpful to scale out and make yourself smaller when adjusting fingers.

Moving the Pivot

A puppet's pivot is the rigid centre of the puppet, also known as the root around which the skeleton articulates.

Whenever you remote grab a puppet, you are always grabbing the pivot.

When working close, it is also useful to proximity grab the pivot without stepping back to allow remote grab. In the centre of the pelvis is a sphere handle which you can grab to move the pivot and the whole puppet rigidly.

Animating Poses

Posing a character will create a pose keyframe in an Animate Poses activity. Create an animation by changing time and posing the character again.

Use the Advance a beat button on the Transport Controls or the Time Tool to move time forward a constant amount (1/2 sec) each time. This can make it much easier to make animations that flow well.