MB Tutorial Part 13: Pose Controls Video Lecture | A Complete Course: Motion Builder - Professional Skills

all right in this lesson right here what
we're going to be doing is talking about
poses and how do we use the pose control
window which would be this little
section right here we're going talk
about all the functionality that exists
inside of it now this is going to be an
interesting lesson and a very powerful
lesson and to make things a little bit
more interesting mr. Zack Parrish will
be driving in this lesson so Zack let's
just pretend I'm a student and I'm
clueless all right of course you know me
from time to time I'll probably stick
stuff in there you'll go right back into
buzz mode and I'll just notice I'll just
tell you I'm sorry now
so with that Zack tell us about poses
absolutely
well poses really is you know if you
have a character you know you you
position him in a certain way that's
pretty much gonna be opposed exactly so
in record I'm sorry there you go again
but uh we can use those in a lot of
really handy with a lot of really
innovative ways here in MotionBuilder
and I'm going to show you some of those
so for starters what I'm going to do is
I'm going to pull a couple of skeletons
in the scene
I don't just wait a sec for this guy to
load in what I'm going to be showing you
is that you can take poses from one
character and you can copy them and
paste them onto another character and
for those out there that may have
skipped vtm number one for whatever
reason and stumbled on vtm number two
while it is indeed a skeleton that he
copied out over there it is also a
character so this guy's already been
characterized right okay so I'm gonna go
ahead and pull in my second skeleton
here just waiting for that to come right
in he's almost here he's coming he's
just making a slow appearance yeah there
we go all right so what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to grab him and I hold down my
hang on he's got to make sure that he's
switched over like the right character
will hold down the Q key and what
that'll just kind of shut off my rig for
a second while I drag everything over
turns off pinning for those wondering
thank you you very welcome alright so
what I'm gonna do I'm gonna start off
we'll take our character here on the
left side of your screen and I'm just
gonna kind of pose him and any kind of
crazy little way it doesn't really this
is my heart that scares me Zack gets
carried away oh the pain poses well I
need something you're kind of extreme to
demonstrate the point you know II that's
not too bad okay I need that one all the
time yes that is actually very true
still scares everybody in my fam
we walk in and see you doing something
like that absolutely but okay so what
we're going to do here is I'm going to
show you how you can take a pose off one
character and just paste it right onto a
second character with the pose control
so in other words you're not going to
actually record this pose where we can
use it later you're just going to just
tell another character to match the same
pose
technically no now we'll be copying it
to a clipboard within the program but no
I won't be adding it to our poses list
right which which by the way we will go
ahead and point out right now when Zack
comes over here to pose control you can
see that they're already several poses
in there and second delete those out
those came in with the skeleton
character and they're not going to be
needed for the simple fact that we're
going to be making all of our own to
show you how to do this right we're
going to pretty much use our own
throughout this lesson maybe toward the
end of the lesson we'll go ahead and
pull some in from clip art absolutely
absolutely
okay so right now we've got two two
entirely different poses here couldn't
be any more different so let's go ahead
and I'll select the the hips here on
this guy just have something selected on
him it doesn't really matter what you
have selected and hit copy now what I
mean when I say it doesn't matter what
you have selected as long as something
on this character is selected when you
hit copy it's recording the entire pose
including fingers everything right
everything on him so now I'm going to go
over head and we'll select a we'll just
go ahead and select the hips on our
other character and just hit paste and
boom he goes into the exact same pose
that's pretty simple could you have
married that as well absolutely but I'll
get Tamara here in just a sec I know but
it would be so cool to see one guy
angled one way and the other guy angled
the other way absolutely so we'll go
ahead and mirror that I'm gonna switch
on gravity but I'll get into that in
just a second hey check it out look at
that now they're just kind of mirroring
just crazy skeletons present a new
lesson didn't carried away it's not
that's cool that's cool but uh all right
so you see how we can copy and paste
from one character to another but we
don't have to paste the entire pose if
we don't really want to let's say just
for instance that I really liked the way
maybe his uh the left arm looked on this
character and I wanted this guy's right
arm to look pretty much the same way
well aren't they right now since they
are married okay
that's not what I meant to say thank you
student anyway so let's say I like the
the left arm here on this character and
I want
I want it to be the same way on this
character as well okay so what I'll do
is I'm gonna under my king mode I'm
gonna switch over to body parts as
opposed to full body which is what I had
selected earlier and we've already got
this pose copied on to the clipboard we
don't really have to do anything else
with that meaning we don't have to hit
copy again exactly I know I'm gonna
uncheck mirror because if I leave it
checked nothing will change and I'm
going to select the wrist effector on
this on this guy's left arm and hit
paste and boom now it doesn't look like
it went all the way up into the air but
you also notice that these guys backs is
also tilted to the side exactly and you
took the other guy and rotated him to
the side the arm of course would go on
up in the air exactly and I you know
actually I can go ahead and do that just
to kind of demonstrate if you like we're
just gonna tilt this guy over well the
rig's gonna have kind of a control
effect here we'll hit Q to shut that off
uncheck pinning and you notice it's
getting a little bit closer but it's
just it's going to be different because
the way these backs are turned
exactly so anyway moving along you see
really quickly how we can take just a
single aspect of one character and paste
it directly over to the other we can
either take the full body or we can take
various body parts but what would happen
if we actually liked one of these poses
and we want to keep it maybe as a list
year and keep using it over and over in
our in our animation okay I'm gonna go
ahead and just put a new scene in here
as opposed to trying to get rid of these
two characters go ahead just wait a
second for that to come in also this
will allow me to just work with one
character from here on out because we're
not going to need two skeletons for the
rest of this lesson something ahead will
drag in a new skeleton no animation and
it's coming in for his dramatic entrance
the opposes can be really neat for
blocking in animation quickly so you'll
often use poses again and again on the
same character I mean but of course you
do have the ability to take a pose from
one character and match it over to
another which is what Zack just went
through showing absolutely in it so now
we're just going to start focusing on
just reapplying the poses to the same
character exactly so I'm going to go
back here to the pose controls and once
again we get called in a couple of poses
automatically with the character we're
going to go ahead and delete those out
because we don't need them but let's say
you know throughout our animation or
maybe while we're animating this
character we're going to be needing this
T stands here over and over
maybe we're just going to need to come
back to it every now and then to to keep
things straight
what I'm going to do here is I'm going
to record this T pose we go in under
character controls and I'll select the
skeleton let me hit the create button
and boom automatically we get a new pose
down here in our pose control list so
you switched over to the skeleton but
you didn't actually select anything so
you didn't have to actually select
something once you activated the
skeleton character itself inside
character controls exactly as long as he
is our selected character it doesn't
matter what on him is selected we can
still record his pose okay so we've got
a pose in here now let me go ahead and
rename this just to keep things a little
straight on here we robably a good idea
and i'll call this the t stance and just
just kind of for demonstrations sake let
me go ahead and make a second pose see
if I can really freak buzz out with
another one oh no oh yeah this is good
this is really going to hurt I can
already tell and it reminds me of what I
did the other day when it snowed really
really bad here and we actually couldn't
get the car back home it was quite bad
as Zach is posing I'll tell you and Zach
actually tried coming over here as well
but he made it about three miles from my
house and had to walk the rest of the
way I made it really close to snow with
my skill driving skills so anyways but
of course not up hill top road which is
where I live which is quite a massive
road out there so while walking back
down the road to go try to get our car a
little bit later that is pretty close to
the pose I hit as I was walking down
these packed ruts and I told myself I
needed to move but did I no and next
thing you know I went into that pose and
then I went into a falling pose and it
was just not pretty actually as I was
there and it looked quite painful it was
anyway moving along let's say that I
liked this pose for whatever the reason
I don't know why I would like this pose
but walking buzzed foot elicit well this
is our mocking buzz pose but let me go
ahead and record this one as well and
once again it gives us a skeleton pose
and it's just getting that name from the
name of our care and of course renaming
it is a good idea so that you can keep
all your poses where you can distinguish
between them quickly right so we're
going to go ahead and rename this one
and I can't think of a better name than
calling this buzz falling down
No so we've got our T stands and our buz
falling down pose and at any time we can
just click on one of these guys hit our
paste button and boom they go right -
that's very nice very handy way to go
right from one stance to another jump
right back to the other as well just go
ahead and click down here now I don't
have to actually just click on this guy
and hit paste which you just saw me do
if I want to go back to the T stands for
instance I can just double click now in
a lot of places in this program double
click means select when you're in the
pose controls window and you're going
through your list of poses
it'll what you're doing when you double
click is applying the particular pose
you know those that are used to working
in other applications in other various
places where you're used to double
clicking - perhaps rename something be
careful here not to go in there and do a
double click to rename this because
you're going to be shooting that pose
out to your actual character exactly
alright so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to go back to my T stance real
quick
so everything looks pretty cool he's
standing there right like he was and I'm
going to show you a couple other things
we can do now just like when we were
copying and pasting if I happen to like
maybe the left arm here on the the buzz
falling down pose and I wanted to
actually put that on our T stance I can
do that all I got to do is come over
here to body parts instead of full body
and we'll go ahead and we'll just we'll
go back to our T pose hang on just a
second go back to full body we'll go to
our T stance okay I was wondering how
you're gonna run it right right okay I'm
sorry
and then now now we'll go to full body
parts I'm sorry body parts not full body
that's cool that's okay I'm reading the
whole thing at one time now I'm going to
select the buzz falling down pose will
select the the left hand effector here
and now we'll paste and you notice the
only thing that moved was that left hand
okay so we can we can take poses just do
the same thing with the left let grab
the left foot there absolutely if we
just grab this left foot and we got
paste again boom oh yeah that doesn't
kind of paint it like some kind of weird
ballet dance kind of thing totally off
balance okay but we'll undo that a
couple of times just for this example
now there's other things we can do with
this as well like I'm what I want to do
now actually let me go ahead and show
you guys the the match controls this is
a really handy thing because it allows
you to do a whole lot of different
things with the poses you've already
created let me go ahead we'll start out
with the go back to taste and real quick
when we go to full body let's go ahead
and
completely to the buzz falling down pose
that is such a cool pose yeah yeah and
once again just like when we're copying
and pasting we can mirror we've just hit
the mirror button and just replaced this
pose boom it just reverses it very nice
okay but there's other things we can do
too over here we have the TNR which as
you know for most of the things in
MotionBuilder sends for translation and
rotation and what this is going to allow
us to do is to match the trends a match
opposed to the translation and/or
rotation of any other part of this
character for instance let me go ahead
and check one and you'll notice as soon
as I check one of these boxes the this
box in here opens up now we can select
through these what I've got here is I've
got a list full of various parts of this
character I've got the hips the left
foot the right foot and so on what I can
do is I can match a pose I can match
from one pose to another through these
effectors this sounds really complex but
let me just kind of demonstrate for you
yeah you might want to go and turn
gravity off even though it's going to
cause our guy probably to jump here
right limit basically what I'm doing is
I'm matching one pose to one of these
specific body parts for instance let me
go and we'll just choose the left foot
okay we've got the left foot selected
here and what I'm going to do is I'm
going to go ahead and go to the T stance
with this translate selected and we
paste you'll notice that the T pose is
now no longer in the middle of our grid
but also let me undo real quick just you
can see really closely what happened
I'll zoom in here watch that left that
left foot really closely it's not going
to move at all when we go to that T
stance that's right what we did is we
match this entire pose the entire
t-stance pose is matched to the
translation of that left foot right now
we could alt it's also you can almost
look at exact like locking right
absolutely I mean if it's easier in your
head to think of it this way it's kind
of like locking the location of that
effector into place when you go to the
pose now you don't have to select in
this case where you select at left foot
you could have selected something else
from that drop-down window to have made
it easier viewer going to absolutely
coming back into the drop down over and
over and selecting a different thing can
get a little bit tedious actually what
you can do is you can use a selected
effector down here at the bottom and
then whatever effector you have selected
in your character controls is the one
that will get mad
- so let's go ahead just for one more
example just so you can see how this is
going with a selected effector selected
I'm going to go ahead will select his
right hand here and I'm going to go to
the buzz falling down pose but we're
going to match it to the current
translation of his right hand and you'll
watch what happens boom and it doesn't
look all that different but you'll
notice the wrist there didn't move at
all so actually you know down here with
this pose you'll notice his left hand is
down really really low uh-huh
so let's go ahead and we'll try it from
there we'll go ahead we'll grab that
left wrist we'll match it will match the
buzz falling down pose to that
translation and boom what happens right
there is he jumps up in the air now what
that would the reason for that is it's a
MotionBuilder tried to accommodate this
entire pose to the location of that
wrist without moving the wrist since we
have it you look at it again as being
locked as far as translation is
concerned right so it pulled the entire
character basically up into the air now
this is something that doesn't
necessarily have to happen they've
provided you with an option so that this
doesn't happen because you know if
you're trying to do realistic animations
and you're jumping from pose to pose
very seldom is your character just going
to pop suddenly up into the air so
you've got this box here called gravity
so let me just kind of undo real quick
you see he's already kind of up in the
air from some of the stuff we have been
doing we select gravity and then now
we'll paste into the buzz falling down
pose and all of a sudden he drops
interesting so gravity Zach effects a
translate X and Z and Y a little
differently
absolutely basically what it's doing is
when you have gravity selected you can
you're only matching your translation
based on the x and z axes it does not
respect the Y translation at all which
means if I grab this guy up here which
is what allowed us to keep them planted
on the ground absolutely see if I pasted
them down in LA it pulls it back it
pulls him back straight back down just
watch real quick and this will this will
become very clear if I grab this
particular effector and I pull it over
an X it starts to look kind of painful
but once I paste it again it pulls the
whole character over because it's
matching everything to on the x axis
right okay but if I take it and I pull
it up into the air and I hit paste again
it'll pull it back down because it's not
respecting that Y translation at all you
got it all right so what I'm going to do
now is I'm going to show you the the
master rotation as well one of the other
things you can do here aside from
matching translations you can also match
the rotation that this comes in handy
let's say if are a good example might be
that foot down there the foot down here
that's kind of twisted actually you know
I didn't really rotate too much but
we'll go ahead and we'll try this let's
say I really like the way that foot is
rotated and I want the foot to be
rotated like that in my T stance well
I'll go ahead and I will uh match the
trip match the rotation of our pose to
that and let me go ahead and go to our T
stance and there you go what it's done
is it has moved the entire pose to
accommodate that rotation now watch this
what happens if you undo that and you
lock both now I apologize for using lock
I'm just that's just kind of how I think
of it right if you match both
translation and rotation now right
exactly now if we do that boom now he's
not only turned in the original
direction that the foot was but he is
kept in that uh that left foot has been
kept in the exact same place the entire
pose has moved to accommodate - exactly
so really that covers most our entire
little match section down there actually
you know we uh we've gone over gravity
we've shown you how you can mirror so uh
what I'm gonna do now is show you how
you can do some things so you can
actually have some hand controls okay so
say like if you got a character you know
one of the bigger things when you're
doing some character animation it's
really nice to do some stuff with the
fingers make those fingers look more
lifelike so I'm going to uncheck my uh
mm my matching through translation and
rotation and we'll go ahead and put him
back into his home T stance as another
really handy one anything about record
and I know you might be tempted to go
and drag some in there but can we go
ahead and make let's just say one real
quick maybe just bend the fingers or
something oh absolutely
let's just let's go ahead and do that
this might remind some people that may
not be you know very comfortable working
with character controls dialog how to go
about going in there and making it to
where that you know you can't select
certain things so that it's easy to
I'm right there with you exactly so what
I'm going to do first of all is I'm
going to pull my uh my skeleton over
here just kind of zoom in zoom up here
on his hand and under show I'm gonna
select skeleton lock selection so
basically I won't be able to select the
skeleton itself just the joints uh the
joy to FK right just for the FK joints
so real quick I'm going to hold down the
spacebar and we'll draw a marquee
selection box around these joints you
I'm gonna hit R for my keys in full body
right now so that's not gonna do me a
lot of good but if I come up Thank You
student okay if I sometimes I select
body parts you'll notice my uh my gizmo
moves over here and if he looks in his
character controls you'll see he
actually has multiple things selected
right look down at the old foot we'll
just kind of like that and pretend that
that's what I meant to do I was just
trying to see if you were on your guard
thank you sir
yes and now he's yeah now now he's got
to do one more thing
he'll just switch on over to selected
yes they go down to selection all right
whoa of course welcome selection as
opposed to body parts I was right there
with you the whole time and actually
we've still got no what you still got
that handle right that's fine though so
we won't worry about that we'll try this
one look try this one more time don't go
back now don't go so far I see what it
is yeah I see what I'm when I'm doing
this I'm dragging my marquee selection
box all over just a little bit too far
and it's grabbing too much so try this
now oh how not yet know that now go
ahead and undo that and go back to body
parts absolutely all right now rotate
Airy now take these guys in so yeah you
know even every now and then even I mess
up
yes act lets me run him through the ring
or two and I know after we're done
recording that he wants to kill me but
it makes it all so much fun I'll bet it
does we'll get back to that later though
so what I'm gonna do here is just kind
of maybe turn this thumb in just a
little bit you know nothing major here
I'm just kind of trying to make a
general fist that's good enough yeah
that should work just fine so what I
want to do is I want to record this now
no matter what I've got selected when I
hit the create button it's going to
create a pose for his entire body
just like it always has in the past so
what I'm going to do when I rename this
is I'm going to kind of leave a note to
myself I'm going to call this fist but
in parentheses I'm going to put hand
only that way I know that when I'm
trying to paste this particular hand
pose onto my character if he's in a cool
pose if he's kind of maybe in the buzz
falling down pose yeah and I want him to
I want his hand to be in a fist that
will kind of keep me straight and remind
me to only paste the hand instead of
pasting the whole pose all right before
we start jumping back and forth and
trying out some of these poses now we
can go ahead and bring in some poses
that are already pre-made for us
available if we switch on over to the
old asset browser by just coming on over
to here and if you look on down you will
find poses available up under the
templates section and you'll find that
we've got hand poses we've got some run
poses and we've got a walk pose as well
so we just take the old hand pose drag
it up in here and then we just import it
on in and here it comes now watch this
it's almost like magic it's coming it's
coming coming and now when Zach goes
back over to pose controls whoa now we
have God hand open hand closed all sorts
of things so Zach if you want to show us
how we can now apply some of those big
long listen you actually they were
already ahead of me they've already got
these labels so you know it's hand open
hand closed you got it
but let's go ahead and what we'll do is
let me let me change my whole pose over
because right now we're still in that T
stance and if we just try to apply one
of these guys these were done in the T
stance as well so as you can see like if
we're just applying full-body poses here
let me go ahead and do that real quick
you'll notice the character himself
isn't changing all that much and the
reason for that is when they when kid
are recorded these hand poses our
character was in his T stance so what
I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom out
a little bit let's kind of let's get him
like in an interesting pose and let's
say we've already got the rest of his
body pose we just want to pose his hands
in an interesting way so I'm gonna go
ahead and stretch change his whole body
into the buzz falling down pose yeah I
love that laughs and then what we'll do
let's say with this hand that's way up
here in the air let's say we want that
to be in the fist that we just created
now when we created that fist if you
remember we created it on the left hand
and not the right hand but what we can
do we need to go to two body parts as
opposed to full body
and we'll select our hand effector over
here and then what we'll do is we will
mirror our pose and we'll paste it over
now it looks like it was there we go
select fist and then paste now that we
mirror it over it actually fists up the
right hand even though when we made the
pose it was the left hand that was
fisted and for anybody that didn't keep
up with what just happened basically but
the buzz falling down pose was selected
and it was already in that pose so right
when men's XII I didn't I didn't select
down one to the fist pose but anyway
I'll go back to just show everybody one
more time he's wearing the buzz falling
down pose entirely we come over here to
body parts come down here to the fist
pose with it mirrored and hit paste very
nice even though we had actually posed
the left hand we can make the right hand
go into a pose with the mirror control
so let's make that one now let's make
that one point the one that's up in the
air okay we'll come down here to mmm see
their hand waiting there you go and
we'll double click it with body parts
selected that way we don't get the
entire pose we just get to hand because
we've got the hand effector selected hey
miss pointing looks like some kind of
weird Elvis kind of thing exactly I
don't for now buzz is becoming cool but
this is becoming now let's say we wanted
to do the hang loose on the other hand
all right so we'll go ahead and we'll
select the right hand the left hand over
here and I don't want my right from my
left
well I've known that for some time Zach
thank you well let's go ahead and point
this out to be very careful for
beginners out there here's a common
mistake and that is to think that
they're selecting the hand by coming up
here and selecting the effector be very
careful with that come down select the
hand right here that's what you're going
to need to select otherwise you're going
to possibly see your entire arm jump
absolutely the one up above that is
actually the wrist effector for moving
around your your I can risk so what we
can do here is look you want this this
left arm to be hang loose right well
that's no problem we've got body part
selected we select that particular
effector that we needed mirrored well we
might see I didn't check out that pose
so I'm not I'm not exactly sure how they
pose it so we can actually just kind of
try if I'm gonna go with a guess of no
we don't okay so we'll undo the mirror
we'll double click hang loose and boom
there you go hey so now buzz is totally
cool one finger up in the air and the
other
is hangin loose oh yeah so you really
got the whole Elvis thing going on right
now all vengas are and really you know
with that we've pretty much shown
everybody I think so what with the
exception of one thing and that is go
back to just buzz falling down post it
on go ahead and paste it on the full
body okay we'll go to the full body will
select buzz falling down and rather than
write double clicking I'll just go ahead
and we'll hit paste again and there you
go let's say for some reason we needed
to make some sort of alteration or edit
to this post right here we also have an
update button in the bottom as well you
know thanks a lot I've been meaning to
show that one I just that one actually
slipped me so what we're gonna do here
is let's say you know this just doesn't
look like a painful enough pose for buzz
to be in so let's grab this foot here
cuz really you know I was there I
watched him slip and fall and oh boy you
know this foot was actually way up here
in the air and that's more accurate and
this one was actually kind of forward up
in the air as well it was about two
seconds before I hit my butt alright so
uh maybe this hand was also kind of like
his whole body was just kind of splayed
ready for impact and that looks a whole
lot more like what happened right about
the time buzz fell so yep now with this
pose change we don't have to create a
new pose for this we actually come in
here to our update button and click it
and boom our buzz falling down pose has
been completely changed look for
instance but with full body let me go
back to my T stands and now when I go to
buzz falling down we get our new pose
very nice and then of course we can
start mixing between all the poses there
to come up with even more PO right we
can do all the things that we've already
shown in this one and you know just as a
tip what you can do is you can start
matching like one pose to another like
take the right arm from one pose and
apply it to another pose and then you
can save that out as a new pose of its
own just for you know for quicker access
alright well I think we've done a pretty
good job here Zach you've done excellent
covering everything inside there some
very important concepts to realize
working with poses is a fantastic
approach for getting animation blocked
in quickly and in fact we're going to
kind of build on that in the very next
lesson I'm going to have you go in there
and do some sort of crazy just one piece
of a walk cycle not even a full cycle
just one arm you know
word leg back that type thing just one
pose and from that one pose I'm going to
have you make them walk so that was cool
right all right excellent well this is
going to wrap up the pose control
section so with that thanks a lot guys
thank you