Posing a character for beauty shots.

NiGHTS2o06

Hi guys, currently im finishing off a character with no intention of using him for an animation however id like to have a beauty shot of him in a good pose. However, when I manually try to move polys around I can only make the character look good in one viewport but then terribly disfigured in another.

I was wondering if anyone had any good tips on quickly posing a character for beauty shot purposes. Cheers in advance.

SnarG

Zbrush has tools for posing, otherwise it'll need to be a rig and skinning job. The key word is 'beauty' - ie, you're trying to show off your model in its best light, so if I were you I'd take the time to set up a rig and position your character.

breakneck

what program? either way, learn some simple rigging techniques and you should be able to make a decent pose.

Farfarer

Modo's got a neat action centre called border, which takes the open end of your selection and makes that the pivot point for your tools. So you can quite easily set up a morph map and pose the character using that, working down the joints, I've used it a fair bit for posing characters.

But, really, a quick rig usually gives slightly more natural looking results and allows for far easier tweaking of the pose if you're not satisfied.

pior

Hi Nights!

Tricky question.
I have been using Zbrush for posing, but it really mostly works on dense meshes that you can then rework locally with sculpting tools. I don't think a lowpoly model would ever look right posed that way, using transpose.

I would recommend grabbing a copy of 3DSMax (current demo will do) and use character studio's Biped structure. Obviously you will hear many purist telling you that there are so many better rigs out there, or would tell you to build your own, but CS truly is simple to work with and is fully covered in the help files, along with the skinning and weight painting tools. You will figure this out over an evening worth of study.

You can also try the free CrypticARSetup rig (also for Max) - it will give you more 'bendy' controls.

Good luck!

Junkie_XL

pior wrote: »

Hi Nights!

Tricky question.
I have been using Zbrush for posing, but it really mostly works on dense meshes that you can then rework locally with sculpting tools. I don't think a lowpoly model would ever look right posed that way, using transpose.

I would recommend grabbing a copy of 3DSMax (current demo will do) and use character studio's Biped structure. Obviously you will hear many purist telling you that there are so many better rigs out there, or would tell you to build your own, but CS truly is simple to work with and is fully covered in the help files, along with the skinning and weight painting tools. You will figure this out over an evening worth of study.

You can also try the free CrypticARSetup rig (also for Max) - it will give you more 'bendy' controls.

Good luck!

I personally like biped as well. I wish Physique wasn't abandoned because it works well. The code is just slow and outdated and needs an upgrade. I would love grow & shrink tools and selecting chunks of mesh as elements like armor. Otherwise I still prefer Physique over Skin.

NiGHTS2o06

Thanks guys for your feedback. I should have mentioned that I am a Max user and have used Character Studio before. My main problem is enveloping (joints like elbows, etc). I seem to struggle with these and end up manually painting weights on the elbows which usually ends up cacking up my model anyway. I think I might spend some time on the weekend using CS and see if I can get better results. Thanks again.

Mark Dygert

Junkie_XL wrote: »

pior wrote: »

Hi Nights!

Tricky question.
I have been using Zbrush for posing, but it really mostly works on dense meshes that you can then rework locally with sculpting tools. I don't think a lowpoly model would ever look right posed that way, using transpose.

I would recommend grabbing a copy of 3DSMax (current demo will do) and use character studio's Biped structure. Obviously you will hear many purist telling you that there are so many better rigs out there, or would tell you to build your own, but CS truly is simple to work with and is fully covered in the help files, along with the skinning and weight painting tools. You will figure this out over an evening worth of study.

You can also try the free CrypticARSetup rig (also for Max) - it will give you more 'bendy' controls.

Good luck!

I personally like biped as well. I wish Physique wasn't abandoned because it works well. The code is just slow and outdated and needs an upgrade. I would love grow & shrink tools and selecting chunks of mesh as elements like armor. Otherwise I still prefer Physique over Skin.

Yep, biped is a great quick rig for posing, and physique will give you pretty good skin with a few tweaks. Skin is easier to tweak for final deformation, but for what you're after I'm sure it will give you great results.

It will at least give you a really great starting position to remodel/tweak your final pose.

There are some out there for Maya too.
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/character_rigs/