Moving character by hip vs moving selected charater

jaebea

As I am animating a scene (in DS), I tend to forget when I am supposed to move a character using the selected hip node or selecting the whole character and moving it that way. I tend to do it wrong the first time. Could someone talk to me about this so I will know when to do each one. Maybe if I hear an explanation it will help me to remember.

Richard Haseltine

There's no absolute right or wrong, at least for your own use, but the benefits of keeping the local posing on the hip is that you are then free to use the root node to reposition the figure in the scene without breaking the pose - poses for sale, and ideally freebies, should leave the root alone and use only the hip (unless they are placement poses) but not doing so, especially in a pose that is not going to be useful for repurposing as it is tied to a particular set, is not a disaster.

jaebea

So, I think I had my verbage wrong? The Hip is not the root? It sounds like selecting the whole character is the root. Is that correct?

Richard Haseltine

Actually I'm not sure - I've seen root used for both the first actual bone, such as the hip, and for the figure. I think hip=root is probably correct, and the other is just the figure, but I don't always remember that when typing.

WendyLuvsCatz

I know I find it extemely difficult with Genesis in Daz studio using animated poses pz2 as opposed to aniblocks with transforms built in.
Is tad easier but still pretty dodgy in Carrara, iClone and Poser where I can fix those transforms somewhat by keyframe editor action, and changing pivot/hotpoint values at end of animation I do not have keymate etc for studio.
really all animated poses should be on the spot without pivot information in order to join them with the user working out distance traveled
sadly I suck at this getting footsliding which is where aniblocks are handy.