TYPE: Object State
TITLE: Pose Tool

The Pose tool is used to pose characters by manipulating objects. This is
similar to the Objects tool except that it treats bones as a special for
superior interaction.

Select the objects to manipulate, and right-click to complete the operation.
You will be presented with one or more Pose handles for bones and
Object-specific handles for the other object types.  Each separate bone chain
will be given its own Pose handle.  Bone chains that branch will have a
separate Pose handle for each branch.  Any bones that are controlled by an
Inverse Kinematics solver will have a Pose handle attached to all the bones in
that chain (even if not all of the bones were selected).  These handles let you
manipulate the bones in a variety of ways, depending on the type of solver
applied to the bone chain. To transform more than one object at a time, change
the Handle mode menu in the Viewer Controls toolbar to Global Transform. This
is also available via the Ctrl+Right mouse menu.

For bone chains with an Inverse Kinematics solver, you can move the end affector
and you can apply a twist.  The twist will move the twist affector if there is
one; otherwise, it will modify the Twist parameter of the solver.

For bone chains with Forward Kinematics or no kinematics, you can select any
bone in the chain and manipulate it directly.  You can also select the
transform handle at the end of any joint, and manipulate the handle.  Doing so
will use inverse kinematics to assign new rotations to every bone higher up the
chain.  The transform handle is treated as if it were an end affector for the
chain.  For chains using Forward Kinematics, the bones are manipulated by
transforming the end affector for each bone.  For chains with no kinematics,
the bones are manipulated by changing the Rotate parameter of the Bone objects.

Any joint in the chain can also be locked by shift-left clicking on the
transform handle at that joint.  Locked joints appear with their transform
handles solid shaded.  Unlocked joints appear with their transform handles in
wireframe.  When a joint is locked, modifications made higher up the bone chain
are not allowed to affect the position of the locked joint.

If Secure Selection is turned off, you can select any group of objects in the
viewport.  Pose handles will immediately appear for this new set of objects.
You can also select bones in a network editor, and the handles will appear for
this new selection.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

When posing the character, see if any capture weights need tweaking. If so,
experiment with editing capture regions (the procedural approach) or with
Paint/Edit Capture Weights.  Mirror Capture Weights will come in handy if you
have painted or hand-edited the weights of one limb and want them reflected
automatically to save time.

See also: Bones, Objects, Transform(objxform)
