Question Randomly changing poses (for couple)

[DevilsBed]

So I was playing with Pose Manager plugin, which allow to select 'poses for couple' by selecting person#1 and person#2 and keeping their roots. It's great!

The only thing missing is the ability to play random poses. I tried different methods, like Plugin Loader but they won't work well with poses that use more than one person.

And then I thought about VamX and its abilty to randomly change poses for couples. True kamasutra generator. So now I know it is possible. But how did they achieve it? Has anyone any idea how to randomly play poses for couple?

 

[MacGruber]

(Rabbit hole warning....."advanced stuff"...)

I would recommend a LogicBricks StateMachine brick controlling one (or more) IdlePoser plugins on each of the characters. Use IdlePoser's anchor system to define poses relative to the other character, so you can handle the other body moving as well. For example a hand position is defined relative to the breast it's supposed to be touching.

There is a tutorial for IdlePoser here:

Guides - IdlePoser Mini Tutorial

This is a Mini Tutorial for my IdlePoser plugin. I wrote this for a discussion thread. I decided I might as well make it a resource so it can be found. IdlePoser is an extremely powerful animation plugin that is using an alternative approach...

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Tutorials for LogicBricks, including the StateMachine here:

Guides - MacGruber's Video Tutorials

This page will gather my hopefully growing collection of video tutorials about various VaM topics. "Pay after watching, IF you liked it!" Producing quality video tutorials consumes a LOT of time. Just producing 10min of video takes about 6-8...

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Example what LogicBricks + IdlePoser can do. It's great to achieve some randomness by having multiple independent IdlePoser for hands and body interact with each other. However, compared to actual motion capture of a real person doing the actual movement, animations can look a bit mechanical at times. But that's the same with all manually animated stuff.

 

[DevilsBed]

@MacGruber

I watched your tutorials on StateMachine and had another read at IdlePoser. Here is what I did:

I added IdlePoser plugin to person#1 and person#2 and created an empty atom with StateMachine added in.
I loaded my two-characters pose and captured current state for each person. I did that twice for two different poses.
Then I anchored person#1 to person#2 (and vice versa) with 'blend anchor' (to 'head' and 'abdomen'). I applied the anchors and captured the states.

I then selected StateMachine and connected triggers of 'enter action...' to the states of IdlePoser... and it works! Flawlessly even, because not only does it play my two characters poses without breaking the pose, it does so with a sweet transition between them, which is more than I asked for. I will add more states to IdlePoser and will try to add an element of randomness, maybe with the cooldown option.

Many thanks!

​

 

[DevilsBed]

A tip if someone wants to play random poses for a couple, but doesn't want the smooth transitions between poses because they might disrupt the limbs placement over time: Use Timeline instead of IdlePoser to save 'current pose' for each person. Then tick 'use pose as transition' for each pose animation, and the characters will "teleport" instead of smooth transitioning. Maybe there is a way with idle poser, but I didn't find any.

Thanks again MacGruber, now my scenes will be a lot more interesting without me having to manage what pose will play next!

 

[MacGruber]

A tip if someone wants to play random poses for a couple, but doesn't want the smooth transitions between poses because they might disrupt the limbs placement over time

I would recommend to always add at least one control point (which is also just a pose) to guide how the animation should look. Simply because a curve looks more natural than going in a straight line, except for maybe very short transitions.

For complex transitions where 1 or 2 control points are not enough, you can also add "intermediate states" (also just a pose). For example for something like footsteps where you would always want one foot on the ground.

Example with two control points to guide the hand around the body and rotate it so it doesn't go through the body: