Why: Poses.

Incomitatum

With my discovery of Body Paint I have gotten into low poly character building.

In the past I have seen the T (Jesus pose), the relaxed T (more like a droopy Y or hovering Magneato); and then this other thing that I have no idea what it is called.

I am told the other way (does this pose have a name?) is the BEST to use. So I have.

I built my characters with their arms out in a T, then I used the working pivot to (at the elbow) bent the forearm in 30degrees, then I rotated the whole arm -down- 30 degrees. So far I -think- this is right.

But, like with many things, comprehension helps a subject go a long way. I have been looking. If this is the -right- or -good- way to pose things... why? Why/How is this better than the others? What headaches am I helping myself to avoid by doing this now?

I am not doubting, but, again, I am seeking to understand.

Thank you all for you patience and help.

Below are examples of the pose...

Mark Dygert

Any time you can pose your character as close to their default posture the less chance you have of something stretching or deforming weirdly. Whats the best default posture for all characters? Depends on what their default posture in game is going to look like...

Since most characters don't turn around in a T pose in fact the arms often rotate 90 degrees down and stay there, the T pose is nice for modeling, bad for animation.

For rigging I like arms at a -45 degree angle (90 being classic T Pose/Da Vinci). It's half way between the two extremes. It helps the shoulders deform and keeps the envelopes far enough away from the body as not to create too many weighting issues.

I also like the legs rotated 15-30 degrees away from each other, it also helps keep envelopes away from each other.

For modeling I like the T pose its much easier to manage pieces and parts that aren't angled.

Per has a pretty good base pose for rigging and sculpting FPS models.
http://www.3pointstudios.com/portfolio_characters.html
With this posture it makes it easy for the characters to grip guns and have the folds in the cloths look more natural then if they had been sculpted in a T Pose. A lot of the common joint deformation is already modeled into the characters making those deformations less extreme when the character animates.

I highly suggest even if you never want to be a rigger/animator that you rig up a few characters and do a few common animations. It will drastically effect the way you model things, and greatly help with your understanding of their weird and bazaar requests.