Am i the only one hating the A pose ?

Development Character & Animation
1

Hey Everyone !

Sorry about being a little grumpy here but everytime i have to spend some quality time with the skeletons, i know it’s gonna hurt and it never fails, just because of that damned A pose.

Granted, i’m a complete ignorant on modeling and animation, but i’d like to know if i am the only one having some hard time with this pose ?

It makes retargeting hell and it makes socket orienting hell. By comparison, T pose is pure heaven :slight_smile:

Being a complete zero in artistic matters, i bought a lot of animated models on the marketplace and spent a lot of time using sockets and retargeting animations back and forth between various skeletons (mixamo, UE4, even models from Unity exported/reimported in UE4 via Blender^^)

So this gives me a very little bit of experience with this and everytime i come back with the same question: why the A pose ?

I remember reading somewhere that A pose was more natural than T pose for animators and modelers because the mesh is less stretched, is that the reason we have to deal with all those awkward angles ?

Anyway, i would very much like to hear how the pros deal with all the uncomfortable angles when, say, you want to set the orientation of a hand socket ?

Are there any tricks/tools or do you become with time a natural in 3D rotations ?

I know there is no perfect solution because rotations simply don’t commute in space, but the A pose doesn’t seem to be the more rational solution to deal with that fact.

The T pose seems to make everything relatively simple at least for an indie amateur like me, what’s wrong with it ?

Is there some consensus here or is it one of those questions you should never bring on the table if you want to keep your friends, like religion and politics ? :smiley:

Cheers !

Cedric

2

I believe the explanation is simple - there are many models who are very cumbersome to work with in the T-pose (Think anything with huge pauldrons, or bulkier characters like e.g. the hunchback enemies in Bloodborne). Their shoulders might clip into their back. In contrast, both those models and “normal” models work in the A-pose.

3

The A pose is pretty much standard pose for many reasons, other than some of the ones mentioned in the previous post, there are many anatomical reasons as to why it is preferred.

Usually you need as much of a neutral pose in animation rigs as possible so that later you can have more control in the bone and muscle movements. In the case of a T pose the arms are at 90 degrees angle this makes the scapula and clavicle bone shift upward (this happens at 30 degree angle which is why A pose is usually at max 30 degrees) as well distorting not only the arm but the entire neck area as well as back and upper chest, creating a neutral pose form a T is going to be more work and needless confusion to make it right than the other way around.

Socket placement shouldn’t be a problem all that much.

I don’t know much about re targeting inside UE but i’ve seen some complaints come up, but then again re targeting completely different proportioned characters or rigs in UE or any other non 3d app is just asking for trouble regardless what method you use, it is preferable sure all this is worked up with the proper rigs outside UE and just imported as animation files to be used and re-targeted for similarly proportioned characters.

4

Applying a skin weight to a character in the A-pose position makes things easier as far as joint rotation goes but with an app like MotionBuilder it does not really matter if the rig is set to A or T. Overall it’s a personal preference that if you change things now set as A pose to T pose then you will just get people complaining they preferred the A pose. :wink: