Basic Pose Overlaying Tutorial (Prompted by notes ...)
My notes were apparently only lacking the visual I had in my head to make sense for some (I need you guys around more often! Every time someone here has to read any of my notes for anything they end up scratching their head and going “What?”) and someone else asked me to explain how it all fit together. They knew more or less what I was talking about but the process was daunting.
So, really quick and dirty (not THAT kind of dirty) a visual walk through of what the hell I was on about here. I am going to break it down to pretty basic so a lot of this will be repeat for a lot of people.
Couple notes: (read these!)
You will need two cheats active for this. moveObjects on and boolprop snapobjectstogrid false. Add in boolprop allow45degreeangleofrotation true and those are the only cheats I have going 90% of the time. I don’t often use anything else; I have logical issues with userStartupcheats files (they are logical, I am not). Those three. That’s it.
Second. I have spent way too long fiddling with poses and overlays and figuring out how they work together and how one pose warps another and yes, I do plan most of them out in my head before I even load the game. (I told you I spent too long) Those were the notes from earlier. I saw the scene in my head and made a best guess which poses and overlays would work to pull it off. I am often wrong.
That is where the PoseBox Catalogue comes in. I have a request for a tutorial on how I use that though so I won’t get into that here.
On with the images, yes?
I need to set up Anto’s apartment for an upcoming scene so Anto got roped into testing this pose. As did Random-bartender-guy-from-the-bar-downstairs-who-has-Cael’s-hair.
Everything I will be using is here in this shot. There are also a few extra things. What is here? Well
1. The freezer clock (which I don’t expect to need, I just feel lost without it)
2. Cup Of Poses v1.2
3. Shiftable OMSP’s (I am guessing I will be using 2 and 4, that might change. You can of course use any sofa height OMSP as well)
4. Random-bartender-guy
5. Anto
6. Parts Posing Box
7. PoserBox
8. Custom Prop Hack for Movie Makers & Storytellers
9. Custom Modeling Poses Overlay Hack V2 w/Face Overlays (also will not be used, it is just everywhere anyway)
10. 'Depression' Custom Animation Hack V1
Oh, and the couch, we kind of need that too.
First, grab Anto (who has been designated Sim 1 if you are following the notes from the post that started all of this) and place him on a 2 OMSP.
Click Depression Anim box - Male - Sofa
Lean on Side …
And the pose looks like this.
Then we move Anto to the couch and set him down something like this. We can tweak where he is sitting later and probably will. (We also move the damn rug because it is covering up the OMSP, but that may not be an issue for you)
Grab Random-bar-guy (I am just going to go ahead and call him Sim 2 from now on) and place him on the OMSP (which I have guessed at being 4. Why 4? Because he will eventually be laying down on the couch and 4 shifts up nicely to be just shy of flush with the top of the couch cushion)
Usually I would set the main pose first, like I did with Anto and then tweak arm position, except Cup-of-poses won’t let me do that so everything else has to come first.
Go to PoserBOX and then Arm Overlays
Insecure ... Start.
And right there I can tell this is not going to work for what I want (might for something else, not what I am looking for for this) So, I stop the Arm Overlays - Insecure pose and try Defense instead.
Defense will work!
Now to the Cup-of-Poses … Floor
Pose 7
Which looks like this with the earlier arm overlay from the PoserBOX
Flip Sim 2 around. Shift the OMSP up until he is on the couch not in it (if you can’t use shiftable OMSP the Invisible Magispaly tray/sofa OMSP work just as well) and if it wasn’t for Anto’s hand sticking through his chest like that, this one would be good to go.
Fixing Anto’s arm is where this gets fiddly and I am going to do this in pretty much the opposite of how I listed the arm overlays in the other post so it is easier to follow.
Firsts lets look at what each arm overlay looks like. (and move Sim 2 so you can actually see them)
From the Parts Posebox (these are high priority overlays. They will completely stomp on everything any other pose told the arm to do, except other high priority overlays/animations. Can be overlayed with other high priority overlays.)
Left 1 looks like this
Left 3
Left 4
From the Prop Hack (some of these can be effected by the underlying pose. Play around with them and various different poses to figure out which ones)
Purse 6 Forearm (L)
What I am looking for is Anto’s hand resting on Sim 2’s (who’s name is Godfrey apparently …) shoulder with his arm sort of draped along Sim 2’s side.
After putting Sim 2 back I can see that to accomplish what I am looking for I need to bring Anto’s entire arm up, the hand needs to tuck in toward his chest and the elbow must come forward and drop down.
Sounds complicated doesn’t it?
It really isn’t.
Start with Arm - Left1
This brings the whole arm up nicely (and if you didn’t want to fiddle, you could probably just leave the pose here and still have pretty much the same effect. I fiddle. It is what I do.)
Arm - Left3 will both bring the hand forward and drop the elbow so we will go ahead and overlay that as well.
Hand is forward, elbow is down. Now to bring the entire forearm up and out.
Which Arm - Left4 will do
It brought it up too high though.
Add one more Arm - Left1 (Never overlay the same pose or overlay more than twice! Doing so will force the sim to reset and you will have to start again.)
And we are so close to perfect you could probably adjust their positioning and fudge the rest with camera angles.
Except I fiddle. It is what I do.
Over to the Prop Hack for Purse 6 Forearm (L) which will very slightly rotate Anto’s arm and tuck his elbow down even more and …
That is why I fiddle.
Sim 2's head angle was still looking a bit weird though so I popped him out of his laying pose (cup of poses - floor - pose 7) and going over to the PoserBox. Go to Neck - BendRight Rotation. Then Select 10°
This tilts his head slightly to the right or down when we lay him back down which we will go and do now.
Remove the poseboxes, make the OMSP's invisible (and add the dog, because she said so) and you have a cuddly new pose
That works from several angles
And would be great for say a quiet evening on the couch watching TV.
That's it. We're done. This is the point where I usually get a stupid grin on my face and do a little dance in my chair because "OMG it worked!" They don't always. I like when they do, it means I can get on with the rest of the chapter.
So, really quick and dirty (not THAT kind of dirty) a visual walk through of what the hell I was on about here. I am going to break it down to pretty basic so a lot of this will be repeat for a lot of people.
Couple notes: (read these!)
You will need two cheats active for this. moveObjects on and boolprop snapobjectstogrid false. Add in boolprop allow45degreeangleofrotation true and those are the only cheats I have going 90% of the time. I don’t often use anything else; I have logical issues with userStartupcheats files (they are logical, I am not). Those three. That’s it.
Second. I have spent way too long fiddling with poses and overlays and figuring out how they work together and how one pose warps another and yes, I do plan most of them out in my head before I even load the game. (I told you I spent too long) Those were the notes from earlier. I saw the scene in my head and made a best guess which poses and overlays would work to pull it off. I am often wrong.
That is where the PoseBox Catalogue comes in. I have a request for a tutorial on how I use that though so I won’t get into that here.
On with the images, yes?
I need to set up Anto’s apartment for an upcoming scene so Anto got roped into testing this pose. As did Random-bartender-guy-from-the-bar-downstairs-who-has-Cael’s-hair.
Everything I will be using is here in this shot. There are also a few extra things. What is here? Well
1. The freezer clock (which I don’t expect to need, I just feel lost without it)
2. Cup Of Poses v1.2
3. Shiftable OMSP’s (I am guessing I will be using 2 and 4, that might change. You can of course use any sofa height OMSP as well)
4. Random-bartender-guy
5. Anto
6. Parts Posing Box
7. PoserBox
8. Custom Prop Hack for Movie Makers & Storytellers
9. Custom Modeling Poses Overlay Hack V2 w/Face Overlays (also will not be used, it is just everywhere anyway)
10. 'Depression' Custom Animation Hack V1
Oh, and the couch, we kind of need that too.
First, grab Anto (who has been designated Sim 1 if you are following the notes from the post that started all of this) and place him on a 2 OMSP.
Click Depression Anim box - Male - Sofa
Lean on Side …
And the pose looks like this.
Then we move Anto to the couch and set him down something like this. We can tweak where he is sitting later and probably will. (We also move the damn rug because it is covering up the OMSP, but that may not be an issue for you)
Grab Random-bar-guy (I am just going to go ahead and call him Sim 2 from now on) and place him on the OMSP (which I have guessed at being 4. Why 4? Because he will eventually be laying down on the couch and 4 shifts up nicely to be just shy of flush with the top of the couch cushion)
Usually I would set the main pose first, like I did with Anto and then tweak arm position, except Cup-of-poses won’t let me do that so everything else has to come first.
Go to PoserBOX and then Arm Overlays
Insecure ... Start.
And right there I can tell this is not going to work for what I want (might for something else, not what I am looking for for this) So, I stop the Arm Overlays - Insecure pose and try Defense instead.
Defense will work!
Now to the Cup-of-Poses … Floor
Pose 7
Which looks like this with the earlier arm overlay from the PoserBOX
Flip Sim 2 around. Shift the OMSP up until he is on the couch not in it (if you can’t use shiftable OMSP the Invisible Magispaly tray/sofa OMSP work just as well) and if it wasn’t for Anto’s hand sticking through his chest like that, this one would be good to go.
Fixing Anto’s arm is where this gets fiddly and I am going to do this in pretty much the opposite of how I listed the arm overlays in the other post so it is easier to follow.
Firsts lets look at what each arm overlay looks like. (and move Sim 2 so you can actually see them)
From the Parts Posebox (these are high priority overlays. They will completely stomp on everything any other pose told the arm to do, except other high priority overlays/animations. Can be overlayed with other high priority overlays.)
Left 1 looks like this
Left 3
Left 4
From the Prop Hack (some of these can be effected by the underlying pose. Play around with them and various different poses to figure out which ones)
Purse 6 Forearm (L)
What I am looking for is Anto’s hand resting on Sim 2’s (who’s name is Godfrey apparently …) shoulder with his arm sort of draped along Sim 2’s side.
After putting Sim 2 back I can see that to accomplish what I am looking for I need to bring Anto’s entire arm up, the hand needs to tuck in toward his chest and the elbow must come forward and drop down.
Sounds complicated doesn’t it?
It really isn’t.
Start with Arm - Left1
This brings the whole arm up nicely (and if you didn’t want to fiddle, you could probably just leave the pose here and still have pretty much the same effect. I fiddle. It is what I do.)
Arm - Left3 will both bring the hand forward and drop the elbow so we will go ahead and overlay that as well.
Hand is forward, elbow is down. Now to bring the entire forearm up and out.
Which Arm - Left4 will do
It brought it up too high though.
Add one more Arm - Left1 (Never overlay the same pose or overlay more than twice! Doing so will force the sim to reset and you will have to start again.)
And we are so close to perfect you could probably adjust their positioning and fudge the rest with camera angles.
Except I fiddle. It is what I do.
Over to the Prop Hack for Purse 6 Forearm (L) which will very slightly rotate Anto’s arm and tuck his elbow down even more and …
That is why I fiddle.
Sim 2's head angle was still looking a bit weird though so I popped him out of his laying pose (cup of poses - floor - pose 7) and going over to the PoserBox. Go to Neck - BendRight Rotation. Then Select 10°
This tilts his head slightly to the right or down when we lay him back down which we will go and do now.
Remove the poseboxes, make the OMSP's invisible (and add the dog, because she said so) and you have a cuddly new pose
That works from several angles
And would be great for say a quiet evening on the couch watching TV.
That's it. We're done. This is the point where I usually get a stupid grin on my face and do a little dance in my chair because "OMG it worked!" They don't always. I like when they do, it means I can get on with the rest of the chapter.