(Pro?) Posing tips
It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or if you already have made your way into blender. As a posemaker myself, I know how hard it is to make a realistic pose - here a few tips you have to think of when making poses, to get your pose to the next level.
(I use shibuisims sunflower rigs for my poses, but in base they work the same as the rigs you export from sims4studio, they only have some handy IK controls)
At first: take your time for details. The base of my poses are mostly done very quickly, but it’s all in the details. Fingers, face, mouth, hips. Take your time for the details. Details can make or fail a pose.
Simripper double textures If you make poses for your own story or edit, you mostly make them with your own textures (through simripper) right? But if you want to also send them to the community to download and use, don’t get rid of the original rig textures bij importing your own sim textures. By toggling off and on the textures under your rig in the scene menu, you can see how poses look on your own sims, but also on the ‘default sim rig texture’.
Elbows and shoulders and relaxation. I think I can best show this in pictures. If holding something we almost never raise our elbows unnatural high. They mostly are more ‘relaxed’ to our body. Lower the elbows! (It’s always good to have a little space for thicker sims ofcourse).
Can you see the difference? Hands I think these are the hardest to do. I still struggle with them sometimes. But the best thing to get the best hands is to have a reference OR make the hand yourself in relaxing state. I see it mostly in a pose in an ‘idle’ state that hands are cramped or straightened. Unless you want this in your pose, try to make a hand in relaxed state.
Straightened, cramped or relaxed?
Shoulders I hope every posemaker that makes poses for already a while know this, but I think it's the most important step in starting making poses. Please, start your arm movements (mostly if you want to raise the arms) in the b_R_clavicle or b_L_clavicle joints.
Shoulders are important!
Weight It’s so important in realistic poses to add our gravity. I think this mostly checks out for holding other sims, piggyback poses etc. If you take someone on your back, your back struggles too right? It's heavy! Try to lower that b_ROOT_bind just a little more as what you expect to do in a pose. Don’t forget gravity always pulls us down!
Only a very small distance from the ground is needed sometimes.
Gravity holds our arms down too in 'relaxed' state.
Stiffnes Maybe we can add this to weight aswell, but as humans ourselves, if we are standing ‘idle’. We never stand right up with a straight back, feet perfectly straight next to each other. It’s the same if we sit on a chair, most of us hang a little to the back or to the front. Try to add that in your pose, if you do that - it’s immediately a less stiff pose!
It's only a slight bend in the back joints, but it already looks more natural.
Just remember, you learn by doing and watching. So I hope I can add some more insights to you, as a posemaker for a few years now, to make your poses even better and more realistic. Ofcourse, sims rigs have their limitations, but that's what makes them sims, right? You can find some more simmireen tips on posepack consistency for sharing your poses here
@ts4-poses
