Original subtitles

- [Pierrick] In this video,

we are going to learn our first pose

and I will teach you some tips about good posing workflow.

You will find in the documentation

a link to my Pinterest collection.

It includes a lot of different poses from sports,

martial arts, that you can use to repeat this exercise.

The more you will do, the better you will get.

It's perfectly fine to use drawing references

whenever you are creating your poses

or searching for references for your animation.

But for this exercise,

I advise you to use a photo

because if you are using drawing references or illustration,

there is big chance that the artist

has already pushed the pose, like on this one, for example.

So again, I truly encourage you

to watch as much illustration and drawing as possible,

even try to reproduce those poses.

But for the sake of learning,

I think it's better to use photo references.

Here is the first pose we are going to work on.

you will find the link in the documentation.

Here is what we have to look for

whenever we start working on a new pose.

First of all, the line of action.

In this case, it's super obvious.

It goes from the right foot to the head.

So, we definitely need to define this line of action

in our posing.

Then I'm looking for secondary shapes.

Look at the flow in the arms.

It creates a nice S shape with shoulders aligned.

Then I'm looking at the leg flow,

creating a nice angle with the body.

And finally, the torso creates this nice and smooth curve.

So, those lines are the one we need to identify

and clearly define in our posing.

Third thing I like to do on my references

is try to define the orientation

of the main features of the body, especially the torso.

I will quickly draw some lines

that defines the orientation of the torso

and its main shape, as if I was sketching the current pose.

The simple thing of doing this is writing in my brain

what I will have to look for.

So, whenever you are using a reference,

just draw some line on top of it,

trying to identify the shoulder orientation,

the eye orientation and the torso orientation.

Let's get started and prepare our file.

I'm starting where we left

with our run cycle finished

and then will search for the keying action

in the action editor.

I will duplicate this action

with our character in a rest pose and rename it 04-post-01.

Don't forget to click the shield icon,

I've just forgotten to do it.

Then on my second 3D view, I will rework the shading

and set it to flat, object color,

get rid of cavity and shadows

so that I get a raw silhouette of my character.

I will go back to my main 3D view

and in object mode, I will press Shift + A to add a camera.

Now, the camera should appear in outliner

on the root of the scene collection.

With my 3D viewport view

aligned with the front of the character

I will press Control + Alt + zero on the numpad

to set this as being the camera view.

I really clean the camera transform channels

so that there is no offset on the X-axis location

and no rotation but on the X-axis.

I will hover over my second 3D view

and press zero to switch to camera view.

And then instead of the outliner,

I will open the image editor and load the reference.

You will find it in the files,

or you can download it from Pinterest

or download any other reference

if you want to work on another reference.

Now what I'm doing is positioning the camera.

I'm having a look to the reference

and it seems that the person taking the picture

is slightly higher than the character,

as we can see the top of the shoulders

and the top of the head of the character.

So from a side view,

I will slightly raise the camera to 1.4 meters.

I will push it to the character

and reduce a bit the focal length to 40 millimeters

to get a wider angle.

We will revise the camera a bit later on if needed.

The last thing I will do is go back to my rig,

press Control + Tab to switch to pose mode,

I will go to the rig properties panel,

search for HEAD-FOLLOW and NECK-FOLLOW,

set the NECK-FOLLOW to one and the HEAD-FOLLOW to zero.

That's a personal preference.

But they feel like my characters

generally have a better behavior

with the neck following the chest

and the head being free of any rotation hierarchy.

For me, the most important controllers

whenever you are posting a character that is on the ground

are the torso controller and the feet.

And the torso controller or center of gravity controller

is the main and most important controller,

whatever the pose you are doing.

So the first thing you have to do

is pose the torso controller.

I'm lowering it

and I'm rotating it to the side on its local Z-axis

by pressing R and Z twice,

so that I can manipulate the controller in its local space

since by default my pivot point is set to global.

Then the most important controllers

are the feet controllers.

I am using inverse kinematic as usual,

and I'm manipulating those controllers on the Y and X-axis

so that they stick to the ground.

Before even watching the whole shapes of the leg,

I'm watching the orientation of the feet.

One of the big benefit of 3D animation

is that we can focus on each feature of the character

one by one.

So I first make sure that my feet are properly oriented

and properly matching the reference.

Then, as we need to adjust to torso shape,

just make sure that you use at 90%,

the center of gravity or the torso root controller,

and then slightly tweak the chest and hips by rotating them.

As I'm still at working on the chest, hips,

and torso controller, just look at the knees.

I've also posed the pole target

so that the right leg knee

point a bit inward toward the camera

while the left leg knee point a bit on the outside.

At the end of the posting,

almost every single controller of the character

will be posed.

As any form of art, there is a lot of back and forth.

You need to watch your character from every angle

to make sure that it looks good.

Since the legs and the torso of my character

are more or less posed,

I can now rework a bit the camera position.

I press Control + Tab to get out of pose mode.

And then I can click the outer edges of the camera view

to select it.

Then from this view,

you can press G and Z twice to zoom in and out.

Or press R and the axis of your choice to rotate the camera.

I've slightly lowered the camera as it was too high

and rotated it so that I can nicely frame the character.

Here you can see the actual transform values of the camera.

From the camera view,

I can slightly adjust the center of gravity position

and also work a bit on the hips controller.

Note that the hips controller

will have a lot of impact on your legs shape.

Watch for the groin alignment

and the chest alignment of the reference.

You can see it's leaning a bit forward,

so I'm adjusting it accordingly.

As for life drawing,

watch your reference as often as possible.

Don't over-focus on your character

and forget that you have to check the reference.

Once I feel like I have a good pose,

I will check my center of gravity

by checking my character from the bottom

and checking the feet alignment

compared to the center of gravity, or from a side view.

And it feels like my character is a bit out of balance.

His center of gravity is a bit too far on his back.

So I feel like the character will fall on this bottom.

To fix this,

I simply need to push the center of gravity a bit forward.

This is why it's very important to check your pose

from every angle,

because this is something I wouldn't be able to see

through the camera view only.

3D posing is like freaky sculpting,

and you won't be sculpting a character

without turning around it most of the time.

And this is also why sculpting and drawing,

while they are not mandatory,

will make you a better animator

because you will learn to better pose your characters.

One thing I've noticed

is that I've rotated the neck too much forward.

As being a continuity of the spine

that goes through the chest,

try to keep your neck slightly aligned with the chest

for a better flow.

And then I can rotate the head

to try too match the final pole.

I didn't work on the shoulder or the arm on purpose

so that we can focus on legs and torso.

Don't hesitate to hide the arms to rig the pose.

Your brain will do the job

of figuring out where the arms should be

and you can have a clear view of your current pose.

So I can now pose the arm, I will display them again,

and I will start with the shoulders.

The shoulders are clearly raised on the character,

so I would rotate them,

and then I would start posing the left arm.

When posing the forearm,

do remember that your elbow can rotate only on one axis,

the local Z-axis.

Whenever I need to change the orientation of the arm,

I will twist the arm controller, not the forearm controller.

And then I pose my character

following the chain of hierarchy.

First the shoulder, then the arm, and finally the forearm.

Then I will work on the other arm.

And when I've run the reference analysis,

I've tried to figure where the elbow was

beneath those clothes

so that they can then select the arm controller

and twist it accordingly so that the elbow is pointing down.

Then as usual, I will go down the chain and pose the hand

so that it's slightly open towards the sky.

From there, I can turn around my character

and spot that the arm is not aligned with the shoulder,

and it generates a weird angle that doesn't look good

and that is not anatomically correct.

If you hold your shoulder

and try to rotate your arm backward

with your elbow pointing down,

you won't be able to reach this angle.

So I will fix a bit the pose,

and now look at the flow between the two arms.

But most of the time you want your arms to flow

in a nice curve.

You may think of your arms building

a second line of action in a way.

We are almost done.

Now I'm just double checking the different features.

You can see that my head orientation

doesn't match the reference.

So rotating a bit the neck and the head, I can adjust it.

It's also a good idea to pose a bit the eyes.

Just check both controller on top of the eyebrows.

By simply moving them,

you will be able to set pre-made shapes for the eyebrows

that will all you to reach appealing pose pretty quickly.

As I'm almost done with the pose,

I'm double checking the different features.

Slightly repositioning the foot and reorienting them.

And I will just put another problem

regarding the relationship between the left shoulder

and the left arm.

This angle here is impossible to reach

between the shoulder and the arm.

Basically, with your shoulder at rest

you can't have your elbow getting upper than the shoulder.

As soon as you want to rotate the arm beyond the T pose,

the rotation is done by the shoulder,

creating a nice straight line

between the shoulder and the arm.

So this is really something you have to remember.

Don't forget that the arm rotation has a lot of limitation

and you need to compensate with the shorter.

That's a beginner mistake I see a lot.

So I can fix this issue and now pose the hands.

One of the most important controller regarding the hand

is the palm controller.

This is this little controller on the side of the hand.

When rotating it,

it will curl the hand

with a nice fall off between the different pan bones.

First beginner mistake to absolutely avoid,

hands are never flat, unless you are pushing on a wall.

So please always input a bit of rotation

in this palm controller.

As for the elbow and the arms,

the fingers have limitation in their rotation.

Remember that your finger root can tilt a bit

or rotate side to side.

They can curl, but they can't really twist.

When it comes to next joint into your fingers,

which are manipulated using the second controller here,

they should only be able to curl.

So while everything is possible in animation,

try to match those anatomical constraints

whenever you are posing your character.

Then while moving,

we may need to bend the limbs of our character

in a weird way, just to follow the flow of the animation.

But currently, just try to respect anatomical constraints.

Now regarding the finger pose,

look at how they are grouped.

The index and the middle finger are linked together,

while the ring finger is slightly getting away,

and the pinky is the one that is the most on the outside

and opening the hand.

Finally, don't hesitate to change the location

of the controller too.

You can move them by grabbing them

if you feel like the rig is breaking

or you can't reach the pose you are currently looking at.

There is no rule of thumb (chuckles)

whenever you are opposing the hands.

Also, you see, while I'm pushing you

to follow the constraint of the body

whenever you're opposing your character,

what's matter is the shape.

So if you can't reach the correct shape for the fingers

using an anatomically correct behavior with the controllers,

just cheat and move them a bit.

Even if those controllers are called bones,

they don't behave like a real life skeleton.

Plus you have to take into account the flesh, the muscle,

the fat on top of the body

that will currently shape your character.

So just move them as you want

so that you can reach the nice pose.

While I do advise you to follow anatomical constraint,

if you can't reach the pose you want, just cheat a bit.

So my advice is to always follow an anatomical constraint,

especially if the rig is built on them.

Which is more or less the case with this rigging.

But the most important thing is the result,

this is what your customer, the viewer, will see.

So if you need,

cheat with the rig to get to the right result.

An example here, I'm using this ankle tweaker

just to break a bit the odd angle I have on the ankle

that doesn't look right.

This is not anatomically correct,

that will be pretty painful,

but in the end it looks a bit better.

So some with small adjustment, we can call this posing done.

In the next video,

we are going to see how we can push this pose

to make it even more appealing.