Workflow Advise on posing

[dimitribastos]

Hi there.

I have a character on T-Pose and simply want to make his arms rest by the side of his torso. If for some reason I need to change his arms position again, how can I do this? Everything is on the same layer, so there is no way of selecting only his arms without interfering on his chest with the selection.

Does anyone have a workflow?

Would be nice to be able to select his arms in retopo room and use this selection on sculpt room, for example.

Thanks!

[y077er]

These two videos are very informative about Posing the Mannequin 

 

[dimitribastos]

Thanks, but I don't think it suits my needs though. My arms are already posed but can't lift them without selecting the torso.

While the painting conditions are a good thing, for this specific task it does not work.

[AbnRanger]

When you make any kind of selection in the Pose tool, you can always switch to the PAINT select mode and use it additively or substractively. So, for example, if you use the LINE selection method to select a limb, but have some spill over, onto the torso....you would want to switch to PAINT select mode and use either a brush or shape marquee to remove the spill over. What I often do is...

1) Cache the layer and peform the Pose operation on a lower SubD level proxy

2) Use PAINT select mode > either freeform lasso or closed spline to select limb

3) Use a Brush draw mode in E-Panel > hold the SHIFT key and brush the area I want to smooth

4) Pose with either standard gizmo or FFD cage

 

[digman]

You can also save your T-pose selection before moving the arms closer to the body. When you are ready to move the arms to another position, reload the selection.

Another method to test:

Create a clone of the model or save as a different 3DC file name.

Use the split tool in a sense to create your own mannequin. That way you can transform the model. Merge the layers together when done and of course there will be some clean up necessary. Whenever I do posing, accepting some cleanup is just part of it atm in 3DC..

Edited May 9, 2017 by digman

[dimitribastos]

Thanks, @AbnRanger and @digman.

 

At first sight, the save and load selection looked like a good ideia. However, after doing some posing, I tried to reload a selection and this message is shown: "mesh structure was changed and stored selection can't be applied to the mesh"

[digman]

18 minutes ago, dimitribastos said:

Thanks, @AbnRanger and @digman.

 

At first sight, the save and load selection looked like a good ideia. However, after doing some posing, I tried to reload a selection and this message is shown: "mesh structure was changed and stored selection can't be applied to the mesh"

Darn,  it always pays to test, I normally do but very busy today... sorry about that... One would assume that it would not make a difference. I would like to see that changed at some point.

Edited May 9, 2017 by digman

[AbnRanger]

1 hour ago, dimitribastos said:

Thanks, @AbnRanger and @digman.

 

At first sight, the save and load selection looked like a good ideia. However, after doing some posing, I tried to reload a selection and this message is shown: "mesh structure was changed and stored selection can't be applied to the mesh"

It should work if nothing has been done to the model, like using LiveClay for  localized tessellation, switching to voxel mode and back, etc. But if you are loading it in the same setting and nothing has changed with the structure of the mesh, then getting that error message is a bug that should be reported.

[dimitribastos]

I will do further tests by the end of the week and will share the results with you. Thanks a lot, guys!

[AbnRanger]

Just did a quick test on the default human figure and SAVE/RELOAD works. Something must have changed with the mesh. If you store a pose selection, then cache the layer, you have naturally changed the vertex order and thus 3D Coat doesn't know what verts to select since they have changed. 

A stored selection in a non-cached state will work on the same non-cached mesh. A stored selection in a cached state will only work on the same cached proxy. You cannot mix them. And if you make any kind of changes (that would alter the vertex order) to your mesh after you stored the selection, you nullify that selection.

[digman]

 Save---Load does indeed work as expected. Testing would have shown my error in assuming on my part that transforming a selection would not affect the store selection. I assumed incorrectly...

EDIT--- I tested the Tweak room. There you can store a selection, do your transforming of the selected area, Remove the selection, then reload the selection you save and it works, you get no error message about the mesh being altered. Now the mesh is only being transformed, no reordering of the vertices so I see why that works.

Pose tool in the sculpt room is re-sampling the mesh to compete the transformation altering the vertex order... The surface representation in voxel mode (triangles) gets their vertices reordered. Surface mode true polygons the same. Being busy, I did not let my brain catch up... 

Edited May 10, 2017 by digman

[dimitribastos]

I can't not work in Tweak Room. Tried to transform something there once without any sucess. Can't any tutorial on 3D-Coat Youtube Page as well.
Do you guys @digman and @AbnRanger have some vídeos for Tweak Room?

Also, I will try again store selections.

[digman]

I was just mentioning the tweak room as to arriving at my conculsions not that is where you want to work, sorry I did not mention that clearly... 

Tweak room is best for lower polygon models... 

[dimitribastos]

Yeah, I know. I was trying with some retopo mesh.

[dimitribastos]

Just for reference, I'm working on this guy. Everything is 3D-Coat, except the render and hair.