Why are characters in T-Pose by default?
PhilW
Posts: 5,145
All Daz characters are positioned in a T-pose as their default pose, and yet most poses require the arms to be more down by their sides. This means that shoulders are almost always in a stretched position, stretching textures in this area and leading to sometimes less than perfect geometry in the armpit area. Fitted clothes also look bulgy around the shoulders and don't have a natural look because of this.
If you look at most clothes (in the real world!), they are designed with the arms at 30-45 degrees, not 90 degrees. It seems to me that if figures were designed with this kind of arm angle by default, it would get around this issue to a large extent and allow more natural clothes fitting.
Any comments on this from Daz figure designers or clothing designers (or indeed anyone!)?
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Comments
i am not sure why it is really. It is how you get taught to do it though. Personally when I model a humanoid, the default is not a T-pose, but not arms straight down at the sides either, about halfway between the two. Seems to work the best that way for both textures and geometry. That is my 2 cents on it
The T-Pose gets used a lot because it's the easiest one to rig. If you have body parts which come into close proximity it can make your life a lot harder, so the idea is to spread out the figure more to minimize this. It also makes developing clothing easier as clothes modelled in the arms-down pose can get fiddly to work with around the sides of the figure and the arms, especially on more fantastical outfits which may have wider sleeves.
It's not without reason that the T-Pose is so commonplace.
However, I've always wondered why the figures WEREN'T defaulted in a "Spread Eagle" pose for the same reason--don't the same rigging issues that we get from arms-at-your-side apply to legs, too?? Or is it because there's a limit to the Z-axis compensation when rigging the legs out of verticle before Poser and other apps rebell?
T pose is easier to make clothing on. Eg if the arms were down, getting in the armpit area would be a mission. With a standard T pose, you have access to all the hard to reach places.
i wish there was a lil more room to make pants for M4. is a tight space
You surely have to cope with this issue in the crotch area with pants etc. - The default position isn't spread legs (probably just as well!). And I wouldn't envisage the arms right down by the side, but at a 30 - 45 degree angle, which shouldn't make rigging too difficult. And I believe the shoulders on clothes could be made more natural in this position. If I lay out a jacket for example, the arms are manufactured in this kind of position, so shouldn't a 3D version follow suit (pun not intended!).
If you have Marvelous Designer, the default avatar in positioned in the kind of "A-pose" rather than "T-pose" that I am talking about, so it clearly works for them.
Maybe in respect to Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man?
LOL!
You surely have to cope with this issue in the crotch area with pants etc. - The default position isn't spread legs (probably just as well!). And I wouldn't envisage the arms right down by the side, but at a 30 - 45 degree angle, which shouldn't make rigging too difficult. And I believe the shoulders on clothes could be made more natural in this position. If I lay out a jacket for example, the arms are manufactured in this kind of position, so shouldn't a 3D version follow suit (pun not intended!).
If you have Marvelous Designer, the default avatar in positioned in the kind of "A-pose" rather than "T-pose" that I am talking about, so it clearly works for them. That's because MD auto drapes clothing. Try manually building those details with the arm down in the armpit area for example.
spreadeagled legs work better for me in Carrara when attaching my own modelled clothing
I have wondered why figures do not have them as default too.
I have the issue in Daz studio using the transfer utility of mesh influenced by the wrong leg and find fixing it with the weightbrush most fiddly indeed.
It's not for rigging, it's for modelling purposes.
It's also a bit of a dinosaur - the original Poser figures and poses were modelled in a T pose, and the poses based on that. Later figures were in the T pose for backwards compatability, and when Vicky, etc first came out, same thing. It just ended up as the Poserverse/DAZverse standard.
Oh, and the original Girl is in a bent A pose, and people complained she looked like a blowup doll because of it (and her cartoony physique).