Posing hands against surfaces

andya_b341b7c5f5

I am currently struggling with posing hands against surfaces - walls, floors etc - and with grasping objects.  Presently, this involves laboriously positioning the hand, then each finger a 'bone' at a time, all the while using spot renders to check whether the contact with the surface looks right.  This is terribly tedious and time consuming, whichever combination of tools I use - universal tool, rotation tool, sliders in the Paramters tab etc.  It's made worse by the fact that when I have a close up of a hand in the viewport any camera movement to get a different angle takes the hand out of view, and I have to fiddle with the pan and dolly to get it back in view.  Bluntly, I'm just not getting enough done with this workflow.

Is there a shortcut I am missing here?  A function to click a point on a surface or an object, then a hand and select a 'put hand on surface/around object' button would be ideal.  (As would some finger and palm flattening morphs!)  Even the ability to script it would be helpful.  Or is this a tiny niche with just me in it? 

Any suggestions appreciated.

Cris Palomino

One thing to remember is there are some pose controls for hands in the parameters tab for the figure.  http://prntscr.com/87vvzj

Also, there are different pose sets for hands such as http://www.daz3d.com/get-a-grip-hand-poses-for-genesis-2-males which are set up for tasks.  Search under hand poses.

andya_b341b7c5f5

Thanks for the pointer to the controls in the parameters tab - I think I saw those some days ago and found that they did not behave as I wanted when starting from a full body pose, which includes some posing of the hands and fingers.  So the fist/grasp controls seemed to want to start from a completely flat hand.  However, I will have another go with them.

I will also look into to hand pose products.  These would be helpful, no doubt, but I'm on a tight budget as well as working against deadlines.  After the hardware investment required to use Iray within time periods measured on a clock rather than a calendar, I will have to work to make a good case for them on a cost-benefit analysis!

sriesch

andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

... It's made worse by the fact that when I have a close up of a hand in the viewport any camera movement to get a different angle takes the hand out of view, and I have to fiddle with the pan and dolly to get it back in view. 

If you are using DAZ Studio: In the viewport, select the hand, then hit the frame icon.  rotation will rotate about the hand rather than about the figure, which should help a lot.  Also note that you have the ability to have multiple viewports open, so you could have a top view, a side view, a front view, and a perspective view all at once (provided your monitor is physically large enough that multiple views at once aren't unworkably small.)

jestmart

Never use the pose controls for hands as it establishes a link with the individual bones making near impossible to fine tune their paramaters.  The broken square icon in the camera/view control tools is for framing what is selected.  Make a hand camera ( or two for left and right) select the hand and click the frame icon, the camera will now be centered on the selected hand.

Tobor

I think what the OP is really looking for is a collision detection indicator, as found in that other program. Since it's not in D|S, we're down to setting up additional cameras and viewports to hover around the hands to carefully position them, thus avoiding fingers going through arms, faces, and walls. So to the OP, you're not really missing anything other than getting a workflow with camera views. It's hard work to get hands right.

KA1

Some very useful tips here and my new thing I've learnt today? The frame tool for camera's - this should help my work flow when I get to the posing part!! Thanks all!

Cris Palomino

jestmart said:

Never use the pose controls for hands as it establishes a link with the individual bones making near impossible to fine tune their paramaters.  The broken square icon in the camera/view control tools is for framing what is selected.  Make a hand camera ( or two for left and right) select the hand and click the frame icon, the camera will now be centered on the selected hand.

I can't say I have ever found this to be the case.  This pose was created using a combination of the hand pose controls and refining with individual bone parameter dials.  I also like to use two cameras so that I can view what I'm posing from two angles at the same time.

andya_b341b7c5f5

Thanks for all the good advice, duly noted and much appreciated.  I have used the camera framing icon, but not with hands and in combination with mutliple cameras/views - I think that will help a great deal once I get it figured out.  Yes, collision detection or some type of 'snap to' function is what I'm dreaming of!  But I'm reassured I'm not missing something magical, and that posing hands is actually quite hard to do.  ('That other program'?  Intriguing!  My only other relevant experience is with Blender.)