Hello barzinc,

unfortunately the "unaffectedValue" won't work in Poser pre-11, and I want the figure to remain compatible with at least Poser10 (and P9 if possible).

The workaround I figured out to beat bad poses from mangling the figure is my "Lock-Unlock Figure" Python script in the "Karina's Toolbox/Python Scripts" Pose Library folder:

It will *lock* all SHAPE parameters in the body and head to their current values.
Like this they can't be messed up by badly designed poses or expressions.

Here's an excerpt from the manual for that tool (admittedly missing in the download):

Zitat

---

THE FIGURE LOCKING TOOL
#######################


USE FOR:
Figures

WORKS ON:
Currently selected FIGURE


WHAT IT DOES:
Locks or unlocks dials in a figure so that they become immune to accidental changes, or to changes injected by badly designed poses or expressions.
This is achieved by setting the "minimum" and "maximum" values to the actual value, and also setting the "force limits" flag when present.

RESTRICTIONS: Works for A4/G4/H4/K4/M4/V4 based figures only.






GENERAL:
########

---> (Go fetch yourself some tea; this is longer reading, but recommended)

I guess we all had this happen before:
We've painstakingly created a character by spinning the dials, fiddling with knobs and sliders, until after weeks of hard work we are finally satisfied with our new character.

Now we are eager to put that character into action.
So we load our character into the scene. We apply a "click" pose for the body, and another "click" pose for the facial expression.

HORROR!!!

Worst-case scenario is, we have standard V4 again; all our carefully spun dials are GONE - OVERWRITTEN by the bad poses!

What to do? Edit the pose injections manually, and remove all not-wanted injections?
Nah!

The ONLY way to protect your figure from this mutilation is to LOCK all the dials used to create your character, so they can't be modified by neither scripts, nor accidental changes.



One important thing before you start:
=====================================

We'll be talking about a dial's DEFAULT values here; in most cases that means "zero".

However there are others who are not zero. If you want to know: the default value is the value the dials is reset to when you ALT-Click on a dial.

So if this script resets the dials, always keep in mind that it does reset the dials to their DEFAULT values.
(e.g., some character injections have their master dial set to default = 1 . In this case the script would leave the character at ON value, and you would have to zero that manually.






INSTRUCTIONS:
#############

To run the script, double-click the icon in your "Pose" library. The UI appears.

On top you'll see name of the current figure selected. If it's not the right figure, abort the script, select the right figure in the Poser UI, and rerun the script.

In the next frame "Please select action" there are these options.
Pick yours:



1. LOCK:
--------
This will lock every *VISIBLE* dial in your figure that is *NOT* at default.

So before you run this option, better make sure that all values you don't want to be fixated are really at their default value!
This explicitly applies for third-party injections which don't follow the rules.

The script will try to zero your figure's rotations, as well as the standard DAZ facial expressions, as best as it can. But it can't take into account all third party morphs too, because it can't be determined what's an expression and what's a morph dial.
So if there are any such non-standard expressions, make sure they are really at "0.00000". Otherwise, they will be locked - without mercy...

PRO TIP:
>>>>>>>>
If you have a couple of dials that you want to permanently exclude from locking, double-click (in the Parameters Pallette) on the dial in question so that the dial's properties window pops up. Go to the entry ("Name"), and add a dash - to the beginning of a dial's name (e.g. "WhateverMorph" becomes "-WhateverMorph")
This will exclude the dial from being locked by the script, permanently.
As an alternative you can modify the "Exclude List in this script permanently: See Appendix)
<<<<<<<<

Another important feature of this script is, it will lock dials ONLY in the BODY and HEAD actors of your figure (and in the Hip, if you use SASHA2).
This is on purpose:

In case of the BODY actor these dials are the Master dials which control the various body parts.
Let's say, to achieve a certain pose, you must "tweak" some morphs to make your render look good.
You can't do this in the Body actor, because the dial is locked.
Instead do it in the body part(s) which you want to modify! The advantage of this is that you can go back to the original state without the need to remember the original setting, Set the changed values back to zero, or simply run the "RESET" part of this script (see below).

---

For me this script fixes all of the issues with bad poses and expressions.
I routinely run it before I save a new character to the library and never have problems with that character again.


Re. the shoulders:
If you're applying poses not made for SASHA and it's "Collar Control", simply turn that feature off.
(BODY - Special SASHA Controls)
However I prefer to leave it on because in most poses the arms must be adjusted anyway, so leaving "Collar Control" on eases the job significantly.

Karina

Ah, now I see what you're looking for.

However, I doubt that it will be doable, because there are just too many rotations and too many parameters involved. Youl'd also have to take into account different body shapes (e.g. hip width, fatness, etc. etc.) and limbs scaling. Actually I never saw a pose that worked out of the box without any corrections (except for a standard figure with standard body shape, but who has this?).

And then in the end you'ld still be stuck with a badly designed or unrealistically balanced pose, as the vendor designed it.
Example:
Wrists rotated around X axis (instead of forearms), forearms/shins swung sideways, and anatomically impossible bending ratio of shoulders vs. collars.

In fact that's one of the reasons why Collar COntrol and the rotation limits are there: To avoid such poses!

Here's what I do:
I turn Collar Control OFF and click some poses until I found one that comes near to what I want.
Collar Control back ON, and ZERO Collar rotations.
Then I reposition the arms.

Did you know that you can easily pose SASHA WYSIWYG style by simply dragging at her body parts with the mouse?
If you use this method you can simply grab the forearm and move the arms, then grab the hands and position them (like, on the hip), and then grab the fingers and pull them to where you need. one by one while the hand stays where you put it.
When you think of a normal 3D figure you'll remember that by this method you'll fuck up the whole pose because all the upper torso will follow your dragging, but SASHA is designed to work differently.

Just try it, you'll be amazed how simple and fast it is!

Karina


P.S.:
Also read chapters 2.3. and 6. in the manual for more details)

But then, there might be use for your script, just make it work "The SASHA Way":

0. Set Collar Control off
1. Apply vendor pose
2. Run script to read shoulders and collars rotations only, forget about the rest.
3. Set Collar Control On
4. Recalculate and apply new rotations to SASHA:

The script would first read the rotations from collar and shoulder. Store in two variables.

In a simple version it would just add up the rotation values and apply them to the shoulder instead of the collar (because the collar will follow the shoulder when shoulder is rotated and Collar Control == ON) *1

In a more sophisticated version it could also take into account the different rotation centres of collar and shoulder and adapt the new shoulder rotation so that the approximate shoulder position is maintained vs. the original.

Well, describing technical issues certainly isn't one of my strong points...

Karina


Footnote *1:
You can read the valueKeys for collar control in the shoulders, "valueParm SCTRL rCollar Controler Y" and "valueParm SCTRL rCollar Controler Z". These values will be passed on to the respective rotations axes of the collar.
X axis rotations aren't affected b.t.w..