Blender

The blender allows mixing of poses and controlling of joints via sliders.

The blender is intelligent: you supply a base pose, and the blender will ignore joints that are not different from the base pose. To use the blender, remember:

  1. The first pose in the blender is the base pose. It has no slider and it is used as a reference.
  2. The base pose will allow the blender to mix the other poses intuitively.

The blender mixes poses from the pose library. So any mixing poses must first be stored in the pose library.

Clicking the All button on the blender will add all the poses in the pose list to the mixing board. Using the All button is the easiest method for using the blender, but you must make sure the first pose in the pose library is your base pose.

You can also add poses to the mixing board by dragging them from the pose library and dropping them on the blender.

You can use the blender to control skeleton parts. For example: your character's arms are at his sides in the base pose. You create a new pose with his left arm high in the air. When both poses are placed in the blender, the arm-high slider will control the elevation of the arm (as it blends between the at-the-side pose and the high-in-the-air pose). Add another pose for the right arm. Now each arm can be controlled individually with sliders.

This blending technique is excellent for facial animation. First, create poses for the resting and extreme positions of each portion of the face. Then the facial expression can be controllled completely with sliders. For example: create a neutral expression for the face. Not create a pose with the left eyebrow raised, and a pose with the right eyebrow raised and add everything to the blender. Now each eyebrow can be controlled with a slider.