IMVU - View topic - Poses and Animations using Boris' Pose Editor

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Joined: 07 Jun 2006Posts: 12919Location: Australia

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:12 am Post subject: Poses and Animations using Boris' PoseEditor

I wrote a couple of tutorials in a group I'm in about creating poses andanimations using BorisTheEngineer's Pose Editor and I thought I'd share themin here. Maybe they will be useful for someone

Pose Making!

BorisTheEngineer has created a pose editing program - no fancy 3D softwareneeded! Pose Editor site Forum thread about the program

The program gives you the avi's skeleton and allows you to manipulate thebones, then you can export it as an .xaf file to use in the previewer. You canadd poses to furniture or create triggered poses.

Use the up/down arrow keys to select the bone you want to move. Bones aremoved using six key pairs - Q and A, W and S, E and D, R and F, T and G, Yand H. The different keys rotate the bone on a different axis. Use left/rightarrow keys to rotate the skeleton. To zoom in on the hands to make fingermanipulation easier, press Z. (Hit Z again to go back to normal view).

To save the pose just hit enter to bring up the Save dialogue box. Note thatwhen you save your pose, the default filename will be test.xaf, so to preventany poses being overwritten make sure you give your pose a new name. Alsomake sure that you have the .xaf extension there, because it won'tautomatically add it when it saves.

There is no "undo" or "reset" function in the program, to start from scratchagain you need to close and reopen the program. Or, you can save the "base"pose so that you can reload it again. (Hit L to load a saved pose).

So far I've just been playing with triggered poses. To create a triggered pose,derive from a product such as this one, which is all ready for adding poses(this product is great to use as it is cheap, it will make poses that aremale/female compatible, plus it shouldn't clash with any other products). Goto the Actions tab in the previewer. Note that there are two boxes under thispanel, blue and red. To add a new pose, click add on the left side of the bluebox. Now, to put your pose file in, click browse under Skeletal animation inthe red box, find your .xaf file and click ok. You'll need to enter a triggerword - this is what you type in the client to make the pose work. Type yourtrigger in under Action parameters in the blue box, where it says Trigger.

Now, your pose file that is created in the program only lasts for about asecond. So to make it last longer you'll need to loop it. Add a value underFrame controls in the Skeletal animation section of the red box, where it says# loops. To stop your pose from moving with the avis idle movements, selectReplace from the Composition dropdown menu. To make the avi morphsmoothly to the pose rather than just jumping to it, you'll need to add blend

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IMVU - View topic - Poses and Animations using Boris' Pose Editor

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=199936[5/16/2011 3:08:17 PM]

in and out values too.

If you want to add more poses, click Add in the blue box and add anotherpose in the same way as above.

Once you get the hang of manipulating the bones the Pose Editor is quiteeasy to work with. You can instantly export your poses to the previewer tosee how they look, so you can easily check every change you make.

Hope that all makes sense

For your reference, here is a screenie of what the previewer looks like for oneof the pose packs I've created:

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IMVU - View topic - Poses and Animations using Boris' Pose Editor

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=199936[5/16/2011 3:08:17 PM]

Basic avatar animation

I'm not sure if there is another way to do it, but what I've done is basicallyjust morphing between poses. You basically work in the same way as ifmaking a pose, but you add multiple poses, or ensembles to one action.

So far I've only made one very simple (and fairly crap) animation - this. Youcan use Try It if you'd like to see how it looks. But like I said, it's my firstanimation and not very good

First, derive from a pose-ready product such as this one. Then go to theActions tab. Add your action and give it a trigger word. From the drop downmenu in the blue box where it says After Playing, choose Cycle throughEnsembles. This makes the animation cycle through each "pose" in the set.

Next, working in the red box, you add ensembles for each pose in theanimation. Put your .xaf files in under each ensemble, where it says SkeletalAnimation. For the animation to morph smoothly between poses, thecomposition must be set to Average. The problem with this though, is thatthe pose will change a bit depending on the avi's idle movements, but Icouldn't find a way of getting around it. You can adjust the speed of theanimation by putting a value into Playback Speed (low value for slow, highervalue for faster). Humm and actually I'm not sure what Blend Weight does orwhy I have a value there in my example lol.

Make sure you set your composition and speed for all ensembles. Thespeed doesn't have to be the same for all ensembles - you may want your avito pause for a little longer in a particular pose.

To adjust the length of your animation, put a value in where it says #ensembles played (in the blue box). This value is for the total number ofensembles you want to be played - for example, my animation has 2ensembles and I set that value to 30. This means that the animation playsthrough my ensembles 30 times in total (not 30 times for each ensemble), ie,my animation has 30 movements.

Here is a screenie of what my previewer looks like for the animation linked toabove:

IMVU - View topic - Poses and Animations using Boris' Pose Editor

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=199936[5/16/2011 3:08:17 PM]

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I've never done any 3D work before, sorta just figured this out on my own, soif anyone has better or easier ways of doing things, any hints or tips or ideas, please post them _________________

Last edited by on Thu Sep 23, 2010 7:04 am; edited 3 times in total

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