Pose Sets and Pivot Point
marble
Posts: 7,500
Ok, rant of the day because I'm so fed up with this.
I have bought a lot of pose sets and there are a couple of things that tempt me to delete many of them from my library. Why oh why do PAs create poses where the pivot point is somewhere way outside of the figure? The effect is that when I rotate the figure, instead of turning in place, it moves around in a great arc making tweaking the pose or the position of the character impossible. I just don't know why these sets are allowed to be sold with this obvious and serious issue.
A similar issue is hip rotation. Again, this has been brought up on this forum many times but we still get poses where the rotation is done using the hip bone instead of the figure itself. The worst effect of this is during animations when the figure suddenly starts spinning on its axis like a chicken on a spit.
Oh yes, and finally there's the poses that shift the character to somewhere else in the scene instead of where I have placed them. Damn, that's so annoying. I do know how to fix these things but it is very time consuming and I just shouldn't have to. I can pose manually from zero quicker than I can mess around with those little green and red arrows in the Joint Editor.
If someone writes a script that I can click and fix these problems, I'll buy it in an instant although I think it would be nice if one of the pose creator PAs could provide a pose-fix script.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Yes. This!
Pose rotations should be done with the hip but translations should not, the figure should not be used for posing (which it has been in the poses with the offset rotation) so that it is available for placement in the scene. Only for interactive poses should the hip be used for placement, and for placing the feet (or hands, or whatever part is appropriate for the pose) on the ground.
I whish there would be some guidlines that stop PA's submitting such products. But that's just my hope. I am already diappointed by DAZ QC with the things they run QC on.... resulting in incomplete products (missing textures, missing shaders, incomplete metadata, you name it) or missing downloads, so I am not expecting that DAZ is running deeper QA on the (technical) quality of poses.
People are using DAZ Studio, a really great piece of software, populating the virtual world with Genesis 1 to 8 characters (things competitors are still missing), but the missing focus on quality has potential tu ruin the user experience by not-so-great products. And, as they are sold via the DAZ store, it is DAZ who got the first blame. In my oppinion, DAZ is a great platform for PA's to monetarize their ideas and developments, so it would not hurt DAZ too much if they would bring their quality requiremenbts to a next level. In the long run, this would benefit all - the users, who can concentrate on what they really want to do - creating great renders. The PA's, especially the GOOD ones, as the not-so-good ones will allso have to fulfill the quality requirements or leave. And DAZ, as user satisfaction would rise.
The last pose set I purchased like 6 years ago also altered the figure shape, which was the last straw for me;)
Guidelines should be there, of course. If Richard knows how it should be done, then the PAs should too.
Meanwhile, I hope some talented coder takes my hint and writes a decent pose-fix script. Pretty please?
Can't help on the coding side, but a quick fix if you're having problems with them rotating at odd arcs is to put the figure in a group and move the group, since it changes that pivot point. :-) (Groups are also really helpful if you need to move mulitiple figures in an interactive pose).
As for the guidelines, sometimes things get missed or overlooked when mentioning how they should be done, especially if you're a new PA. I know I've been learning new things with each set, even with trying to look through earlier guidelines and tips. Things like fixing limitations (and occasionally going back and submitting fixes to a set when you discover it's not acting properly for everyone because a function you took for granted might have been turned off for someone else)... making sure feet aern't floating... hip rotations.
I know I'll need to double-check on that one to see if any of my current projects might need readjusting in regard to hip rotations.
Thank you for your perspective as a PA and I'm glad that you at least take notice and go back and fix things. Unfortunately some of the worst offenders are some of the most prolific pose set creators. I don't want to single anyone out because there are several but these problems do frustrate me. I'm pretty good at posing manually by now and I do that most of the time. But I do find it easier to start with a pose somewhat similar to what I'm trying to achieve and then pose it myself from there.
While I'm on the subject of poses, there's another niggle that I might mention: quite a lot of the female poses have the figure arch her lower spine and/or pelvis in a weird and unnatural manner. It reminds me of comic book pin-ups from the 1950's but surely we're beyond that these days?
Maybe if it's not seen as completely breaking a set, they may be less likely to fix it? (Can't really speak for the process of the other PAs). I will say in some cases, it's a lot easier to simply fix things going forward. (I know on the set I did for fixing limitiations, I didn't realize it was broken for others until someone mentioned it on the forums. We eventually figured out where the issue was, and while there was a work-around, it wasn't something a user would necessarily know about, so I ended up going back and updating it. For some things, like the hip rotations, I could see it being a case of seen as an annoyance, but not completely broken since there are more known work-arounds, and thus being less likely to change it. On my end, I usually try to incorporate changes like that in future sets, rather than changing them on the back end.
I definitely understand wanting to start off with a similar pose and going from there. Even though I create pose sets, if I'm making a for-fun render or a promo for a non-pose set, I'll often start with a premade pose because it's a lot faster than making one from scratch.
With the arch/spine maybe they're still aiming for a bit of the pin-up look?
In regards to poses going to a specific spot elsewhere on the map, In your opinion, would you find it helpful to also have a "Zero Placement" pose preset option? I have a set I've been working on occasionally that has positions going to speicific locations, but I'm thinking of including a Zero Placement preset so that the individual figures can easily be reset to the center of the map. (Downside is losing the interactiveness between figures).
If things get overlooked, then this would require a bit of extra QC effort on DAZ side, I suppose. Given the "quality" of "quality control" on DAZ side, this could be a bit of a challenge.
I'm not sure whether it would be a "zero placement" option. In my mind, I would envisage some option to stop it moving elsewhere, whether that be a pre-determined point in space or world-zero. I really don't like poses that default to world-zero either. I just want the characters to stay where I place them. As for interactive poses - I've never found much use for them because they tend to rely on the figures being default G8F/G8M size and shape. As I mentioned earlier, I don't use default figures or even PA morphed characters, other than as a base for my own morphs so I usually have to do a lot of adjustments when I have interacting figures.
try f7eer's script
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5582166/#Comment_5582166
Yes, that does help with one of the problems (hip over-rotation). I have a shortcut for that script when I'm attempting animations.
That makes sense. Since realizing how to set the placement (or choose not to set it), I've been trying not to have poses default to one place or another, with the exception of the Y axis. But it kind of needs to be there for interactive poses (at least to my current knowledge). I can understand not using as many interactive poses for the purpose of size issues, though. I've found some to be easier to work with than others. Not sure what the best option for that would be, then, but it'll be something to keep in mind.
Good luck finding an option that might work better for you, though.
One thing I'll mention that might come into effect is when you have new people being trained for quality control. I assume they have a list of primary things to check for, but they may not have the experience to know when to look for more subtle issues until those issues are brought up.
Or, like in the case where I had the limitations problem on poses, if the QA's program is set up the same as the PAs, while it's not necessarily set up that way for a user because they've customized something in the program (such as setting it so limits are always off on a figure and no dialogue box warns about this), then the issue might not get spotted until later.
Another thing is that some things might be considered a matter of preference, leading to allowing PAs to do what they prefer versus having a specific standard, particularly in regards to things not technically being broken, though users might generally prefer a different setup.
So there's a lot of factors that can play into something getting overlooked, both on the PA and QA side. Hopefully as things continue on, though, the process will get smoother on all ends. :-)
I have some experience of this procedure from my days in tech support. By the time the internet had become ubiquitous, tech companies invariably had forums like this one. I worked for a small development team in a huge corporate and our developers refused to monitor the forums saying that problems should be reported via the correct channels, not picked up form forum threads. Of course they were right - that is the formal way to report issues. However, there was (and is) something to be said for monitoring forums - especially for new developments or products. In the end, we encouraged the moderators to forward anything from the forum that they thought deserved attention - mainly because there was a perception among many forum users that support requests were sucked into a black hole, never to be heard of again.
I have found, with DAZ, that sales support is fine and I usually get a resolution in a reasonable time. Technical support, on the other hand, tends to get an initial response and then I'm lucky to hear about it again - ever. Alternatively, I get emails shifting the diagnostic responsibility to me, asking me to send videos and screenshots of the problem even though I can see from the forum that I am just one of many having the same problem. Those same forum posts often give a far better description and step-by-step procedure to recreate the problem than I could supply in a screenshot. I usually give them a link to the forum thread but I suspect that it is ignored.