Free Puppeteer figure position/Head pose preset available

SnowSultan

Some of you might not even know what Puppeteer is or that it’s been a part of DAZ Studio for a long time and is an amazing animation tool. It also takes some understanding to use well, but can be very useful for non-animation purposes once you know how it works. Hopefully this sample preset might help you learn the basics of this powerful plugin.

http://www.snowsultan.com/free/puppeteer_figureposition.zip

A readme is included, but I’m going to paste it here as well to make sure you read it. IT IS IMPORTANT. smile Basically what this does is put a bunch of dots in the Puppeteer panel that you can use to rotate and translate your figure and pose the head and neck. I think you’ll find it handy if you have to move a figure around in a crowded scene or rotate it without having to go looking for the right dial.

I hope it can be useful! Thanks, take care

SnowS

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Puppeteer Figure Positioning Preset
by SnowSultan
Created and tested using DAZ Studio Public Beta 64-bit Advanced Edition 4.6.2.72 (December 2013)

DIRECTIONS: Extract the file “puppeteer_position” preset anywhere in a DAZ Studio content directory. After loading a figure (works best with Genesis, Genesis 2 Female, or Genesis 2 male) into the scene, load the preset.

Four tabs will appear in your Puppeteer tab: “Hip Rotation”, “Figure Position”, “Head-Neck”, and “My Saved Dots”.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU NEED TO KNOW - keep the Preview radial button checked in the Puppeteer panel! If the Edit button is checked and you click in the panel, you will create a new dot. You may also lose your current pose if you click on an existing dot in Edit mode and you CANNOT Undo what is done while in Edit mode! Save often and MAKE SURE Preview is always checked unless you WANT to save a new dot.

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- Click on Hip Rotation and 8 dots will be visible. MAKE SURE the ‘Preview’ radial button is activated above (not Edit or Record) and click or drag in the grid to rotate the figure’s Hip as if viewing it from above (so the ‘6:00’ dot is facing forward towards the Front camera). If the dots are not all visible, right-click in the Puppeteer panel and choose Zoom to Fit. This will fit all of the dots in that tab in your window space.

- Click on Figure Position and 9 dots will be visible. MAKE SURE the ‘Preview’ radial button is activated above (not Edit or Record) and click or drag in the grid to move the entire figure around the work area, retaining it’s current pose and Hip angle. Keep in mind when saving poses for redistribution that these dots change the Figure’s position, not the Hip. If the dots are not all visible, right-click in the Puppeteer panel and choose Zoom to Fit. This will fit all of the dots in that tab in your window space.

- Click on Head-Neck and 9 dots will be visible. MAKE SURE the ‘Preview’ radial button is activated above (not Edit or Record) and click or drag in the grid to twist the figure’s head and neck. If the dots are not all visible, right-click in the Puppeteer panel and choose Zoom to Fit. This will fit all of the dots in that tab in your window space. These dots control the Neck-Head Bend, Neck-Head Side-Side, and Neck-Head Twist dials from the Head->Pose Control morph section. It is generally better to use these dials for posing the head and neck rather than moving the head and neck individually because those controls work together for more realistic head movement.

- The My Saved Poses tab has no dots. This is a blank tab for you to save complete poses-in-progress, much like Poser’s “dots”. When you have a pose that you like, but are not quite ready to save into your library, click on the EDIT radial button and place a dot to save the pose. Remember to switch back to the Preview radial button before returning to work, otherwise you could accidentally save new dots on the other two panels or revert a pose back to an earlier version. If you accidentally edit the default dots, just reload the Puppeteer preset.

IMPORTANT: Dots save EVERYTHING - all morphs, all transitions, all pose values.

Adjusting Hip Rotation will have an effect on any poses that have been saved with Hip movement data, such as crouched poses. You’ll most likely just need to lower the YTranslate value to lower the figure back to the floor.

SnowS

JimmyC_2009

Just downloaded it, haven't had a chance to look yet, but thank you very much for making this available. It will be very useful, I love Puppeteer :)

juve_satriani

Always excellent !!! ;)

Virtual Media

Thanks SnowSultan, I've always found the puppet tool to be the most underrated tool for DS.