Pinning system counter intuitive

baalhug

Hi, guys:

So after 4 hours of trying and researching and frutration, I'm probably getting it wrong or doing something I shouldn't, but I found around some other people in the same situation but no solution. That's why I say the pinning system is (at least) counter intuitive.

When I want to pose a character but I don't want to move her legs (for instance), I pin the legs, pull an arm and... legs are moving anyway.
I know there are 2 systems for posing, or moving the character's bone system. They depend on the tool you're using: universal or ActivePose. With the universal tool selected you can pin nodes (the legs in this example) with purple pins. With the ActivePose tool the pins are red (using ActivePose tool settings).
The problem is, the only way I found this to work is pinning with the universal and moving with the ActiveTool. If I pin with universal and pull with universal, pinning won't work. If I pin with ActivePose and pull with ActivePose, pinning won't work. If I pin with ActivePose and pull with universal, pinning won't work. And finally, if I pin with both, pinning won't work with any of them.
So this pinning system is, at least, counter intuitive.
But that's not all the problems. That's only when pulling (moving) nodes. Now if you want to rotate nodes, the problem is worse. AFAIK there are 2 ways to rotate a node: with the universal tool you can rotate it with the 3D gizmo, and with universal and ActivePose you can use the Pose control (the concentric circles top left on the viewport). But both must belong to the universal system, because there is no way to achieve a rotation with pinned nodes, at least I can't. Whenever I rotate the hips, pinned legs will move too.

I have seen this video tutorial: 
but this is not the behaviour I'm getting in DS 4.12 and 4.14 versions, I have installed last version to be sure there wasn't something up with my installation.

Am I missing something or this is actually a DS limitation? Other softwares have no problem at all with this: you pin (lock) something up, that something won't move no matter what. <--- that is intuitive

Richard Haseltine

What exactly are you pinning? Is the pose you pull the figure into possible with the pins in place?

baalhug

Richard Haseltine said:

What exactly are you pinning? Is the pose you pull the figure into possible with the pins in place?

I have a character in rest pose or T-pose. I pin her legs (left and right shins). I pull the arms or rotate the pelvis and legs (shins and feet) move too. The only way I can get it working is by pinning the legs with universal tool and pulling the arms with ActivePose tool, in that case I get the same result than in the video tutorial, but there is no solution for the pelvis rotation. Note that thighs are not pinned, so pelvis is not locked by IK (all the nodes directly connected to the pelvis are unpinned). Thanks for your interest, anyway.

Robinson

If you pin at the hip, it should be OK when you move arms around.  If you're just pinning the shin, you'll easily find yourself moving other parts of the skeleton beyond their limits, which will cause the feet/legs to move too.

I think perhaps it would be good if the limits were respected though, rather than the software breaking the constraint, at least in UI terms.

baalhug

These are the steps:

Image 1: I pin both legs with ActivePose tool.

Image 2: I pull the arm, the legs move no matter if i pull with ActivePose tool or Universal tool.

Image 3: I pin both legs with Universal tool.

Image 4: Now legs stand still onlyl if I pull with ActivePose tool.

Rotation of pelvis will move legs no matter how I pin them.

 

baalhug

Robinson said:

If you pin at the hip, it should be OK when you move arms around.  If you're just pinning the shin, you'll easily find yourself moving other parts of the skeleton beyond their limits, which will cause the feet/legs to move too.

I think perhaps it would be good if the limits were respected though, rather than the software breaking the constraint, at least in UI terms.

Yes, if I pin the pelvis legs won't move wether they're pinned or not. So let's get this straight: Inverse Kinematics work inverselly on the bones hierarchy: you drag a children node and it will "pull" the parents recursively adding "weights" to the closer bones conexions, the lowest in the hierarchy. When it finds a bone which has more children (a different branch the one you're dragging) then it ignores wether those children are pinned? It does not make sense to me. Arm ---> chest ---> pelvis <--- thigh <--- shin... If I pull the arm it will only use IK to the parents, not their cousins? I mean, only if the connected node is higher in the hierarchy. But actually that is not what happens, otherwise everything else attached to the pelvis other than the branch you're dragging (the right arm in this example) would only move, not rotate, like a solid block.

baalhug

Actually if I unpin everything and drag the arm with ActivePose tool it will behave exactly as if I pin the pelvis. All the top nodes of the charatcer follow the arm. But if I pin the shin, then the pelvis is not locked anymore. Really counter intuitive.

baalhug

Robinson said:

If you pin at the hip, it should be OK when you move arms around.  If you're just pinning the shin, you'll easily find yourself moving other parts of the skeleton beyond their limits, which will cause the feet/legs to move too.

I think perhaps it would be good if the limits were respected though, rather than the software breaking the constraint, at least in UI terms.

I'm re-thinking what you wrote, and it makes sense to me, it is a good explanation. But you can see DAZ actually works that way in the video tutorial or if you do it by pinning with the universal tool (rotation and translation) and then dragging with the ActivePose tool. I can't think any scenario where anyone would want this to work differently.

superesp87_58361490f5

baalhug said:

Robinson said:

If you pin at the hip, it should be OK when you move arms around.  If you're just pinning the shin, you'll easily find yourself moving other parts of the skeleton beyond their limits, which will cause the feet/legs to move too.

I think perhaps it would be good if the limits were respected though, rather than the software breaking the constraint, at least in UI terms.

I'm re-thinking what you wrote, and it makes sense to me, it is a good explanation. But you can see DAZ actually works that way in the video tutorial or if you do it by pinning with the universal tool (rotation and translation) and then dragging with the ActivePose tool. I can't think any scenario where anyone would want this to work differently.

I found the issue, actually: The shins parents are not pinned. The shins parent to the thighs, which parent to the hips, which parent to the core of the figure. You have to pin the hips if you want to move the arms, because just pinning the shins will move everything.