Pose limits
Taoz
Posts: 10,256
I just got a set of G8F poses from a vendor but when I tried them it appeared that one of them caused almost all poses I applied afterwards to create mesh distortions in the figure. He told me that Pose Limits should be ON for the poses to work, so I tried to load some with ctrl pressed. The Pose Parameters dialog had "Obey Limits" checked by default, so I thought that was the current setting and therefore OK, so I just clicked Cancel, and thought the problem must be something else.
After messing with it for a while to figure out what was wrong I installed DS on another PC, with only G8F and the poses installed, to test. When I loaded the first pose, the dialog popped up saying the pose exceeded the limits, and asked me to choose if limits should be turned off or not. I must have disabled that dialog on the other PC, for it didn't pop up there.
That confused me a bit, for if a pose exceeds the limits, I'd assume that limits should be turned off for the pose to apply correctly. The other thing seems contradictory. For the same reason I assumed that the poses were within the limits - though I admit that having to set the limits to on then sounds unnecessary. So what's going on here?
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Comments
From what I understand, pose limits are there to avoid distortion, although in the real world, people's limbs do bend more, so sometimes getting a realistic pose requires limits to be off.
I'd consider raising a ticket if you have issues.
Yes, that's also what I thought, but apparently it's more complex than that. In this case the poses exceed the limits, but at the same time they have to have limits set to on to work correctly. Sort of like stepping on the speeder and the brakes at the same time.
They do work allright though with limits on, and the readme also states they should be on, so no problem really. Just confused about this apparent contradiction.
The vendor probably made a mistake saying it doesn't exceed the limits. Clearly it does exceed the limits if that dialogue is coming up saying so and asking you for permission. I personally don't exceed the limits at all with poses unless the character is particularly flexible and its an extreme pose. But generally speaking, most poses can be done without ever exceeding the limits, even some of the more extreme ones, it just takes time and careful attention.
I've seen that with creating some character shapes and I don't know why. Studio 4.9.4.122 64 bit. It sets some value or values incorrectly, at -100. I have no idea why. When I apply them, I get the warning some settings are past the limits. If I select keep limits, I get the proper shape. If I select turn off, it's borked.
Maybe others have seen this other bug, I guess I should submit a ticket. When loading many figures (including those from PA, even Daz, installed by DIM) Victoria 7 morphs are incorrectly applied. Applying the character shape fixes it. Also dialing V7 to 0 typically fixes it (and strangely enough, the V7 values will go to desired I believe - V7 head and/or body morph may not be zero, after dialing V7 to 0).
Moral to the story - perhaps it's a workaround to a bug?
Well he didn't say they exceeded the limits, I discovered this myself when the dialog popped up on the new DS installation. He just said that they needed to have limits turned on to work, which seems to be correct. Turning them off apparently causes problems.
Having seen what some of the contortionists out there can do though, pose limits seem to be a very relative thing.
OK, thanks, yes a bug or side effects of a workaround to a bug seems plausible, that this should be normal behaviour just doesn't make sense to me.
If this dialogue coming up when you apply the pose, then the pose preset does exceed the figure limits. And agreeing to 'turn off' the limits will apply the pose to match precisely what ever values the vendor has set, and will break the limits the figure normally has by default. So yeah if he says it doesn't, he's wrong according to that. haha.
And yes thats why I said unless the character is quite flexible, or its an extreme pose, it shouldn't be necessary to break the limits in a pose generally speaking. And most poses with careful attention and time can be made without breaking limits... generally speaking.
I wonder if it could be a problem with the extra twist bones in the arms and legs.
Well maybe he has run into the bug Scott is talking about, and has had to use limits on to make it work. Or you mean he just used limits on as a workaround after doing the poses, instead of fine tuning them to stay within the limits?
Im saying the vendor/creator has used values beyond the limits of the figure in the pose preset. So when you load it, the prompt comes up allerting you that it exceeds the limits and offers you the choice to go ahead by breaking the limits to match the pose 100% or to stay within the figure default limits.That is its purpose.
If it was a bug then every single pose preset would have this dialogue regardless if it breaks limits, which would be a bug. I can only speculate on bugs, but I havent heard of this bieng issue before.
Here's a screenshot. All poses exceed limits, but there seem to be one pose only that is causing the problems, the one to the left. If I apply that pose with limits off, it looks fine itself, but if I apply other poses after it, from the same set or other sets, many of them get a distorted left leg (or both legs, in some cases). The two other poses are examples of this.
If I apply the first pose with limits on, there are no problems when applying other poses after it, also if they have limits off.
BTW, it's not a DAZ vendor, it's one from another store who gave me the set as a gift (commercial set, not a freebie). So it's not DAZ QA that have failed, if anyone have.
Here's the "bad" pose seen from the side, on two overlapping G8, with and without limits turned on. The only difference seems to be the neck and/or head position. Interesting that this can affect the legs, and, as far as I have noticed, only the legs, on the poses applied afterwards.
Ok thats not what I understood from your earlier posts. No pose should ever affect the shape, only the pose, regardless of limits. That leg collapsing on itself is incredibly strange, I really dont know whats happening there, I suggest you contact the vendor who gifted it to you.
Ill try to explain the limits better. When the prompt comes up its because the pose was made with values that exceed the figures pose limitations. It's simply informing you of this, and asks would you like to use this pose as it was made (which exceed the figure limits), or to use it within the limits instead.
-If you say "Turn off limits" it will use exact values the pose was made with, matching the preset 100% and ignore the figures limits.
-If you say "Leave Limits on" it will pose the figure as close as possible to the preset without exceeding the figures limits. It wont match what the creator made 100% because its not allowed to break the limits.
When you compare the "Turn limits off" and "Leave limits on" outcomes, they dont match each other because "Leave limits on" forbids it from exceeding bend/twist limits of the figure. The pose preset was made to go beyond limits so you see differences such as: the neck and head in your screenshot..
You risk distortion when exceeding the figures pose limits because you are bending beyond what the figure was designed to do, which is why its allerting you and asking you what you want to do, and why its undesirable for pose presets to be saved in this manner.
Hope that helps
That's also my idea of how it works, but thanks for confirming it.
I have already talked to the vendor about this and he says this: "This seems a problem of weight mapping; Joint rotation or an unofficial morph that "overlap" with an official morph creating some sort of conflict. I've never seen this before."
Since I have a DS test setup with only G8F plus the pose set installed I think a morph conflict can be ruled out. A bug in G8F or DS maybe?
What you have pictured there is EXACTLY what I experienced with the "Flex Quad" issue.
I believe I broke it by zeroing out the "Flex Quad Right" slider before saving the pose, it looked perfectly normal before the save, then applying the pose and moving the leg caused the leg to "collapse"
What is happening isn't a random mesh collapse. When the knee is straight or bent a little forward, there is some JCM in G8 that is adjusting the "Flex Quad" pose slider automatically. With the slider "misaligned" to the knee bend, it was causing the "Flex Quad" morph to exceed limits, if I remember correctly it was somethign like -650, that's what caused the mangled look.
In my workflow, I have a pass where I use "Currently Used" under parameters tab to check for accidental morph or pose slider activation and remove them. Because the slider isn't hidden by default, I think some pose creators are zeroing out the slider in their internal testing as part of their work flow when checking "currently used" sliders, that is what happened to me.
I ended up re-saving the pose with "Pose Conrols" unchecked (I should probably be doing that anyways but G3 made me a bit lazy) and while it fixed the pose FILE, I wasn't able to fix the figure within the scene. When I deleted the figure and pulled in a new copy, the re-saved pose worked fine.
In my opinion, if the "Flex Quad" sliders are already handled automatically, they should be hidden by default, but I didn't design the figures and there may be some reason G8 is set up that way. I would not be surprised if several other pose packs have this issue but I have only recently started using G8 seriously, so admittedly I have nothing to show.
That's also what I experienced - if the figure first is distorted, you can't fix it by zeroing or whatever, you have to delete it and load a new one.