Confused about x/y/z in prepackaged poses

justThorne

Hey, feeling really clueless about one particular issue. I like to buy pose packages for their own sake, and then sometimes string several together into a crude animation. (Basically my whole interest in DAZ is just a means to "play" with animation.) But one blind spot in my 3D knowledge really screws me up.

That is, I feel I completely understand the 10 basic transforms (Scale, Rotate, Translate each for x, y, z, and the overall Scale), but I DON'T understand how a prepackaged pose can have the figure's whole body facing away from the default perspective view with a Y Rotate value of zero, or the figure lying on the ground with an X Rotate value of zero, and so forth.

When I try to adapt the packaged poses into a stream of poses that will animate well, I get wicked spinning around and chaos that makes no sense, but at least I know what I don't know. The problem must be in this hidden ability to Rotate a figure without changing a Rotation value, or something like that.

Can someone please explain what's going on, what I obviously don't know or understand?

As a simple example (if it would make it easier to explain), how would one pose a figure aiming their butt at the Front View withOUT changing the Y Rotate value? (Because I've bought poses like this with exactly a Y Rotate value of zero, and I am completely baffled.)

Bless anyone who can help me understand this!

Richard Haseltine

You need to bear in mind that there are two ways to adjust a figure's position or orientation - via the hip, or via the root (the thing labelled Genesis or whatever in the Scene pane - by default the first time you click a figure you get the root, and only when the root is selected can you select bones). Standard poses should make any adjustments via the hip bone, leaving the root for positioning the figure in space (the exception would be placement poses, for placing a figure in a specific place such as in a room of a building, which should work on the root so that they don't mess up multi-figure poses).

justThorne

Fortunately, I more or less had grasped all that already. But here's an easy example of a real-world situation that's still baffling me. Say I load the pose and now the character is facing away from the Front View, feet spread slightly apart and arms up in the air or whatever. If I select the figure, all the "main 6" are zero (including Y Rotate). If I select the Hip, the Bend, Twist, and Side-Side variables are all zero or nearly zero. So how on earth did this pose creator turn someone completely around without leaving a variable/setting that I can detect and counteract?

I have two reasons I'm asking. One is simple intellectual curiosity, and a desire someday to perhaps assemble and share pose packages myself, so I should know what's going on.

But the more critical reason is that if I line up a bunch of different prepackaged poses in keyframes, using Y Rotate to adjust several of them (basically to optimize my static lighting upon that pose), I end up with characters not-always-but-often spinning around Y the long way, which looks completely ridiculous, rather than gracefully segueing from one pose to the next.

Meanwhile, I was just looking for more examples to explain what I'm talking about, and found a crazy one in i13 Elation Poses. The figure is lying on the ground, perpendicular to the front view. If I want that pose to "stand up and face the (FrontView) camera," I've got to adjust all three Rotates. (Zeroing the existing hip settings makes almost no difference at all.) And yet, I can't find the original variables anywhere that were used to put the figure in that position/at that angle.

So my feeling is that there's some little bundle of variables I don't know how to see or adjust. If I select the Hip, I see Bend, Twist, and Side-Side. Is there a way to instead see Rotation controls when selecting the Hip?

Or here's another crazy idea. Could any of this have to do with changing the Coordinates setting in the Tool options? I'm wondering if pose creators might change this setting a lot and deliver rotations that might be very hard to do or detect otherwise?

But long story short, if a Pose has a character's whole body facing opposite of the zero pose, there should be a variable I can find and adjust, and I'm not finding it. Any ideas?

Thanks, certainly, for sharing your thoughts already. I was surprised that anyone had gotten in here and responded so quickly,

Richard Haseltine

If neither the hip nor the root are rotated (nor z-scaled to -100%) I can't think how the figure would be reversed. With the laying figure that does sound as if something very odd is happening - I assume the figure isn't parented to another item?

Unfortunately you can get weird effects when rotations pass through +/-180 degrees - adding extra keyframes may help, but I would suggest making a bug report in any event.

The axis options should affect the way the rotations are stored, only the way they are displayed and accessed in Parameters and the orientation of the widget. If they do seem to make a difference that would definitely merit a bug report.

ZarconDeeGrissom

I noticed something similar with camera and lights. Rotate the light at the target, then try to drop the y transit (Vertical) down a bit to line things up.

Some times the light moves in the 'universe y axis', other times it moves in the camera's perspective y-axis. I don't know if there related or not.

It's like the universe gets adjusted to the light's orientation, just for that light. sometimes, but not every time.

This also happens with primitives as well. and is not limited to just 'transit'.
Rotate something 45 degrees in the X, then rotate it in the Y. Sometimes the Y rotate is in the universe xyz orientations, other times it is in the 45 degree offset of the object.

Jaderail

I know this about the Animation part, if rotation exceeds 360 it causes the item to rotate the opposite direction (or just rotate freely) until the value is returned as a positive, 360+6= rotate backwards until positive 5 is the value returned again. This can only be over came with key framing smaller steps for the full rotation in Animation.

I have no clue how a pose is setup with a rotated figure reading zero rotations in the x,y,z.

EDIT: I do not see the 45 degree limit on every use but yes it does often start at the 45 degree point.

Aave Nainen

Just to be sure we are on the same page.......

As far as I know the only way you can have x,y,z at zero on root and yet still have a figure rotated or lying down etc is via the hip x,y,z. as shown in these images.......perhaps a screen shot or two of what you are seeing would be helpful.......when I select the Hip on Genesis I don't see Bend Twist etc. so perhaps you are selecting something other than the Hip node?

justThorne

Okay, Aave, I feel a little stupid admitting it, but you've identified the problem, and now I feel the refreshing breeze of understanding.

Yes, in fact, previously it seems I have always been selecting the Pelvis. Is it possible to select the Hip via Node Selection? Because I'm finding (now that I'm trying) that I can only get the Hip via the Scene tab. The extra layer of obscurity is what was keeping me from properly assessing its values before.

And, in fact, now that I AM selecting the Hip, I'm finding all the crazy values that I was looking for - zeroing them now aims the figure toward the camera, and of course in an "upright" way, which is exactly what I've often been needing to do.

Most of all, this is reassuring because now if I ever want to share poses (or AniBlocks), I can now feel reasonably sure that I will be doing so in a compatible way with the prevailing wisdom.

Thank you so much, and sorry if I vexed anyone with my ignorance. The other minor lesson of this that I'm curious about is the question above: are you guys selecting the Hip somehow without using the Scene tab? Because exactly my inability to do so is what had led me to such confusion. (I had even known, in theory, that Rotating or Translating the Hip was supposed to work as it turns out, and had been confused at my inability to do so. So I'd been doing such to the whole figure instead, which surely led to my conflicts with settings that I had not even detected.)

Thanks again. I think this will actually help me get over several other stumbling blocks I've experienced/haven't mentioned here.

Jaderail

I come from way back in the DS2 days, I learned long ago the Scene Tab was your friend for node selection. I never thought that it was not just general practice as I have been doing so for so long. Some times it take others such as you to remind me that my way of working is not the way everyone comes at the same things. I will try to remember to point out the Scene node tree for this one the next time a user needs help.

justThorne

VERY glad if you've derived any value from this.

For me, there are two cool implications. One is that now I can just zero the Hip, memorize the selected item pose, and then restore it after loading any pose that's too far off center for my purposes, so now I can workflow through all the poses I've bought pretty easily.

The other is that I'd been having some real problems using X Rotate specifically on entire figures (i.e., creating problems within an animation context) that now I know how to do properly instead.

I'm still kind of amazed that the Hip isn't something I can just click on, but I can definitely live with it now that I understand it!

Thanks again to all parties that helped me dope this out!