Poses, scenes and the posing editor

The posing editor (main menu, Pose Editor) is where animations for your mod are made. You never write an animation file by hand: you pose, preview, and press Export.

What you can make:

• A pose or a solo animation: a single character. It plays on anyone, like any animation.
• A scene: several characters animated together, such as a hug, a slow dance, a couple on a bench or a handshake. Each character is a role.

Sex positions are not made here: they have their own system.

#Importing Daz poses

Poses → Import Daz Pose opens your Daz Studio library, showing the picture Daz ships with each pose. Click a pose to put it on the selected character. The browser stays open, so trying poses costs one click each.

• Static poses and Daz animated presets both work. An animated one lands in the sequencer.
• A couple pack imports as a scene: when the folder holds the other half (G8F.duf beside G8M.duf, or the same name with the gender swapped), the second character is added and both are placed as Daz placed them.
• The library is found in Daz's default folders. To browse another one, add it to Game.ini:

ini[DazImport]
+LibraryRoots=D:/Daz/My Library

• A mod can ship poses too: a PoseLibrary/ folder laid out like a Daz library (PoseLibrary/People/Genesis 8 Female/Poses/<pack>/<pose>.duf, the pose's picture beside it as <pose>.png) is browsed as one more library, with no Daz Studio installed. PosesExtended is one.

#Working through a whole folder

The browser is a gallery of the folder you are in, made for reworking a pack pose by pose:

• Save my version keeps the pose on screen, with your changes, as your version of the tile you picked. A couple is saved with both its characters. From then on that tile shows a picture of your version, marked (edited), and clicking it opens your version instead of Daz's.
• Delete my version, under an edited tile, throws your version away and brings Daz's back, so you can redo it from scratch.
• Next to do puts the next pose you have no version of yet on the character. All / Edited / To do filter the tiles, and the header counts how many are done.

Your versions are work in progress, kept in Saved/Poses/Daz/. Delete never touches what you exported into a mod. To ship a pose, open it and Export it like any scene.

Poses you import from your own library are yours to use. Poses you ship in a mod are still the product of whoever sold them: check that their licence allows it.

#Making a scene

The Scene list on the left is the scene: one row per role. + Add Character adds a role.

Select a character and open Properties:

A role whose requirements the preview body does not meet is shown with (!) in the list: you would be exporting a scene you never saw played by someone who can be cast in it.

Play, Stop and Rewind play every role together, on one clock.

#Animating a pose automatically

The Auto tab turns the pose on screen into a looping animation, without keying anything.

• Animate starts it. The pose the character holds then is the base; Use current pose takes the pose on screen again after you change it.
• The sliders mix the motions: Breathing, Sway, Weight shift, Thrust, Bounce and Look around, then Speed and Amplitude for the whole thing. The character plays the result as you drag.
• Locks keep parts of the body out of the motion. Each body part, and the bone selected in the skeleton, cycles through:
  • Free: moves with the motion.
  • Frozen: keeps the orientation it has in the pose. A frozen head keeps looking the same way while the body sways under it.
  • Anchored (hands, feet, hips): stays exactly where it is. An anchored hand on a table stays on the table and the arm bends to follow the body.
• Feet are anchored from the start, so nobody slides on the floor. Lock all stops everything; Free all releases everything, feet included.

The result is the character's animation like any other: Save Anim, Save Scene and Export take it. In a scene, give every role the same Speed so they stay in step.

#Exporting

Properties → Scene: give the scene a name, choose Export to (your mod), press Export. Into your mod's Animations/ folder go:

Animations/
  Hug.ulposescene        the scene: its roles, what each requires, where each stands
  Hug_Giver.ulanim       one ordinary animation per role
  Hug_Receiver.ulanim

Save Scene writes the same files into Saved/Poses/, for work in progress. Saved and exported scenes appear in Poses; click one to reopen it.

#Playing them from Lua

lua-- The whole scene: people in any order, the game casts them into the roles.
if Game:PlayScene("Hug", Player, Actor) then
    Game:Say(Actor, "Come here.")
end
Game:StopScene(Actor)            -- everyone goes back to what they were doing

-- One role's clip alone, like any animation:
Game:PlayAnimation(Actor, "Hug_Receiver.ulanim", true)

PlayScene:

• Casts the roles. Roles with requirements choose first, each taking the person its preference likes best. It returns false if nobody fits a role, and the reason is logged.
• Places everyone. The person cast in the first role stays where they stand; the others are placed around them as in the editor.
• Starts every clip on the same frame, so they stay in step.

A scene that does not loop ends by itself.

The .ulanim files are ordinary animations: an activity's anim can name one too ("anim": "Hug_Receiver.ulanim"), and so can anything else that takes an animation file from your mod.

Folders work: Animations/Couples/Hug.ulposescene is Game:PlayScene("Couples/Hug", …).