AnyPose

I was intrigued by Phate Shepherd's post on the SL forum about a new product of his devising that would soon be released. Called "AnyPose," the product is in the form of a pose stand and a pose player that will soon be released with copy perms, and in the 3-5k l range. A nutshell description: stand on the pose stand and you may then select joints and move them; save to output the data to an emailed or instant messaged bvh.

Although it makes poses, the poses themselves can be used to make animations - I see them as key-framing crucial positions especially in relation to another person. Because I make some fighter animations for Combat Cards, I am interested in this aspect. I could set up two AnyPose stands, or set up an AnyPose stand and a player (which can hold a number of created poses), then move joints accordingly.

There is a kind of sublime aspect that I've not experienced before in being able to move directly in-game. As we know, the much anticipated Avatar Puppeteering of JJ Ventrella which would've added that capability to Second Life fell off the map and its inclusion into the program is uncertain at this point (oh, please, oh, please). The next best thing up to now has been Gearsawe Stonecutter's invention U-Pose, which uses a prim mannikin and allows for more precise movement than Phate's AnyPose, but which does not allow the user to move the avatar on the fly.

This is the very interesting part to me: I could, if I were taking a still photo or making video, put out a few stands and say to actor 1 - please lean against the wall -actor 2 - please stand on one hand - actor 3 - please tilt your head up and stand with one arm out. I could have an on-the-fly pose set-up that, yes, would be still - but often that's all that's needed. And there's a HUD which controls up to six AnyPose stands so you can change the poses for avatars on those stands if you wish. Multiple poses can be loaded into the copy/trans Player and given to others.

What I took away from the demonstration that Phate very kindly treated me to is that this product is another tool in our arsenal. While not good for everything, it covers territory hitherto unavailable for exploration. It's a bit hard to know now where the usefulness will be and to what degree, and it will vary from person to person, but I think Phate should be ready to be a little surprised by the uses found for AnyPose.