Is T pose obsolete

MainManiac

I know T pose was originally used when poly requirements were low, so they had to model it in a T pose to ensure largest range of animation. Now polycounts are much higher and rigging has improved tenfold, so is T pose no longer preferred by modern engines?


I know sculpting muscles in a T pose is near impossible, because the muscles are in a completely different position and compression in T pose vs Natural arms out pose.

Sculpting cloth is also very hard to do realistically in a T pose


From you guys's experience in the industry, what one is used and how is it handled universally?

Moosebish

Its not just that.

The T post allows the skinning and rigging to be much easier since everything is nice and straight. Fingers, arms, legs, etc...

MainManiac

Well yes but rigging and skinning has gotten alot of tools in the recent years and those hard to reach spots arent as inconvenient anymore.

Of course I only mean the arms, everything else would be straightened

Moosebish

There's no escaping tweaking weighting things by hand at some point or another. Tools can take away a lot of the broad strokes, but it will never be perfect..

Ruz

more like arms at an angle , mid way is much more the norm now.
you can obviously animate the arms in to any position you want whilst skinning:)
so there will be no hard to reach spots

MainManiac

But arms "out" is the usual way models are presented to the animator, right? Because sculpting in a T pose is incredibly hard to get realistic

m4dcow

The arms at an angle is basically having the character at the middle of their typical range of motion. Sometimes the arms won't be paralell to the body and the elbows will be bent. This is less to do with sculpting and more to do with deformation.

Kwramm

I haven't seen a pure T pose for ages in production. Most models seem to be natural pose with arms like /|\ up to 45 - 60 degrees.

Warheart

I'd say you're free to use the "Natural" 45 degree arms pose unless the person rigging it says otherwise.

From a rigging perspective there are some benefits to the T pose (e.g. when retargeting via HIK a T pose is preferred while characterising for consistency and if you're building a custom rig in Maya then you need fewer offset transforms with T pose). However, even in this case the model can be re-posed by the rigger post-skinning if it is required.

I work as a technical animator so I do all our rigging and I have no problem getting models in either pose. To support what Kwramm said, I've almost never been given a character model in T pose. In our pipeline I'd usually build rigs in the Neutral pose anyway.

Mark Dygert

Yep, natural pose all the way.
45 being half way between 0(arms at side) and 90(Tpose) It helps with stretching to NOT have joints compacted(Tpose) and to have them half way between what is normally the full range of motion. It stretches half way to one or the other extreme.

It helps the modelers/sculptors define the shoulder instead of doing it with skin weights. This helps them think about cloth and how it hangs when the arms are at rest, instead of hovering out in space.

It also helps modelers/sculptors to get the proptions right, its hard to visualize where the limbs fall on the body when at rest, when the character is in a T-pose. T-pose makes it easier to make the hands too big or too small.

As for rigging, you can rig at right angles then pose the rig for skinning, you don't have to create the rig to match the mesh exactly, you should always build your rigs to be adjustable after the rigging is complete.

For mo-cap as Ruz pointed out once the mesh is bound to a rig you can make conform to a T-Pose if that is how your system syncs.

So yea t-pose is pretty much a dinosaur with very few benefits outside of "BUT that is how I've always worked!"

MainManiac

Thanks for the reply Mark, you cleared up alot

Thanks everyone else also

almighty_gir

just as a point of interest, what's stopping you/the animator from doing the following (if the rig is in a T-pose and the mesh is in a more relaxed position).

• create a keyframe which saves the rig at the "correct" position for exporting into the engine.
• turn on angle snap toggle.
• rotate the bones until they're in the same position as the mesh.
• skin the mesh.
• go back to the keyframe which you saved earlier.
• export.

i mean, this really isn't all that big of a deal, in an ideal world you want the mesh to be built around a rig where possible (i think?) but really, it's a very minor hurdle that doesn't require much to overcome.

correct me if i'm wrong vig/monster/better qualified people than i.