Create Pose Libraries

This page is intended to help you create pose libraries for later use in animation.

Create a pose library

1. Go to the pose library thumbnails panel in the properties window, with a rig selected in pose mode (see the instructions under the As a user section for more help finding this panel).
2. Under the thumbnail viewer, create a new library by pressing the according button.
   • If there are no libraries in the blend file already, then you will see this interface - press the create library button.
   • If there are existing libraries, then you will see the name of a selected library. Click the small + item next to the x to create a new library.
3. Rename the added library to the convention of: PLB-{charname}{libname}.
   • Charname is the name which matches the rig/armature object, which should also match the character name.
   • Libname can be any text, though preferably begins with a dash or space or underscore to separate from the character name.
   • Example valid library names:
     • PLB-chuck-hands
     • PLB-chuck_body_positions
     • PLB-chuck Body Positions
   4. If you are having trouble getting the name to appear in the dropdown, or you want to quickly rename the action, you can click the life saver icon to the right of the dropdown of pose libraries (not the life saver icon farther below) which will quickly populate an appropriate name.
4. Be sure to press the F button next to the library name so the datablock is saved, even if other pose libraries are selected. If you do not do this, the next time you open the blend file, all your poses may have disappeared!
5. (Bonus, reducing the steps for artists linking in assets later): To get the new pose library to auto-appear when the rig itself is linked into another scene, add the action as an NLA strip in the master rig file. If you don't do this, then the artist will have to manually link or append the PLB actions into each blend file where they desire to use the pose library.

Add poses to a pose library

1. Select all the bones you want to apply for the pose (including even bones that you explicitly would want to stay or move back to the "rest" state).

   • Don't over select! If you only want the pose to update the hip and torso, only select those bones at this stage; selecting more bones would also save the position of other bones which might not be desirable.
   • Further examples: a mouth shape library likely would only have mouth bones selected.
   • Best practice may include leveraging bone selection sets to consistently select bones, or using a consistent set of armature layers and selecting all bones in that layer before adding new poses.

2. Press the + icon next to the UI list (not to be confused with the button which adds a new pose library, slightly above). In that popup, select the Add New.

   

3. With the new pose added, double-click the name in the UI row (should be already highlighted blue) and type the appropriate matching now. The name here does not matter, it can be anything.

4. Done! (But, a thumbnail has not yet be created or linked.)

Create a pose thumbnail for existing poses

Quick overview: You can add any image to a single pose, it does not even need to be square, but for best practice it is recommended that images are not larger than say 256x256 or 512x512 as larger images will be slower to load (you wait longer before the previews appear), and non-square images will simply appear smaller and letterboxed. Outlined below are "best practices" on how to create these thumbnails in a consistent and relatively quick way.

1. You should set up one camera that will be static for all thumbnails for a single pose library. This ensures they are all aligned the same way and easy to see the differences between individual poses.

   • Make the position show off the library! E.g. if it's a library that changes body poses like hands feet and torso, have the whole character in frame; if it's just for facial expressions, have the face take up the full frame of the camera.
   • If you've already created all the poses before this point (recommended), quickly cycle through applying these poses so that you can see they all fit nicely in the camera frame you've setup.
   • If the pose library covers a small subset of the rig like just the hands or face, be sure to reset the positions of all other bones back to rest before starting (e.g., don't position the camera on the hand if the arm and torso are positioned in a way that is random because of whatever last pose was applied to those bones, as it would be hard to re-position the hand back there if you needed to update or add new thumbnails later).

2. Set the resolution to 256x256 or 512x512 in the render tab.

3. Completely reset the pose of the rig to it's default, across all armature layers.

4. Select all the bones for the character (un-hide all layers), and apply the existing pose in question.

   • This may reveal "mistakes" in the saved poses, e.g. if you created a face library, but then you found you were also saving the position of an arm or the neck in each pose. If that happens, it'd be best to apply the pose, delete it from the UI list (click the minus sign), and then re-add with the minimal relevant selection (i.e. don't have the neck and arm selected, just all of the face bones or all the bones adjusted by any of the poses in that pose library).
   • But, when applying the pose to show for the render, you should select all bones so that you know for sure that all changes of the pose are accurately represented in the thumbnail to be created.

5. Change the viewport settings to "render" mode in the n-tab of the 3D view, this gets rid of things like relationship lines and highlight outlines which are not useful for these thumbnail renders. Consider going into textured view if not too distracting or beneficial to show off the pose.

6. Now click the openGL render viewport (camera) button. Technically you can use a normal full render, but openGL is faster and will be closer to what the artists using the library will see in real time anyways.

   

7. Now save this image file to disk. Suggested convention, but technically the file can be anywhere and named anything (independent to the name of the pose in the blend file):

   • If the rig master file is in the location ../characters/char_name/char_name.blend, then place all of the pose thumbnails in the folder ../characters/char_name/poses/.
   • Place all pose library thumbnails for all libraries in the same folder (it's a bit unnecessary to create a subfolder for each library).
   • Within that one poses folder, use this naming convention: {library_name}-{pose_name}.png or .jpg
   • Examples:
     • character_name/character_name.blend → the master rig file, which contains the actual actions/pose data
     • character_name/poses/mouth-mouth_o_stretch.png → structure of {library_name}-{pose_name}.png

8. Repeat for all poses.

9. Save the blend file.

You're done! See steps below to connect to the pose in blender.

Connect an existing pose thumbnail to an existing pose

1. See steps above on how to create the thumbnail.

2. Go into the Properties > armature tab > pose libraries panel, and expand the "Creation Tools".

   

3. To help visually see which poses don't have thumbnails attached, consider ticking the box "All Poses" just above; after you press the refresh button this will list all poses in the gallery view, with placeholders for ones that are missing images.

4. Select a pose, either from the gallery view or by selecting the row in the UI list below.

5. If the pose needs a thumbnail, it will say "add" in the top-left under the creation tools, otherwise it will have a "replace" button.

6. Click on this Add/Replace button, and navigate to select the corresponding image in the /poses/ folder next to this blend file.

7. It should now show up (you may need to to press the refresh button).

8. Repeat for all poses needing thumbnails, uncollapse the Thumbnail Creation section when done.

9. Save the blend file!

Edit existing poses

1. To edit the name, simply double click the pose name text in the according row of the UI list below the thumbnail viewer. Note that this will not break the link to the source thumbnail image.

2. To update the actual pose itself, click the + icon to the right of the UI list (regardless of what is currently selected).

3. Then hover over Replace Existing. Then from that submenu, select the pose you want to update based on your current 3D view bone selection.

   

   • Remember to apply a pose before updating, show and select all the relevant bones (and none of the non-relevant ones) in the interface. Know also that when creating a new pose, it will save all bones that are selected, so be careful to have consistent selections when updating a pose.
   • If updating or deleting poses, consider also pressing the life-saver icon below the apply pose icon.

Move/copy a whole pose library to another file

Poses are simply actions, so you can append or link poses or the entire library (the action datablock) into another blend files as desired, using file > append or file > link, and then navigating to the blend file and the actions subfolder. You would then need to manually re-connect the thumbnails, however.

You also will need to reconnect thumbnails when appending a pose library from another scene/file (whereas linking would maintain the proper thumbnail image links).

Recommendations and library best practices

Since you can create pose libraries and link them into other files, it's a good idea to plan ahead how you want to use the pose libraries in your project. Here are some different methods and their pros and cons:

1. Create pose libraries in the same file as the source rig and character.
   • Pros: It's all in one file. When you go to append or link this character into another scene, you can set it up so the actions (pose libraries) are automatically also appended/linked in, which saves steps.
   • Cons: Editing poses in the library mean editing the rig file, which can be undesirable if you want to be able to separately update your actual rig / character separate from your poses. You can't edit the pose library separately.
2. Create pose libraries in another (or multiple) files, with the rig linked in and proxied.
   • Pros: You can separate creation of poses from the character rig itself. If you keep multiple copies of versions of the rig, you won't have old versions of pose libraries in multiple places (each version of the character rig). From a studio pipeline perspective, this method also allows you to have two artists simultaneously working on the rig and the pose libraries without conflict (well, aside from the conflict of an artist updating the rig may make the pose look differently how the pose artist initially intended). One additional pro is that you can in fact have hierarchies of pose libraries: if a project has multiple characters that would want to share the same library, you could have one master file for the common, generic poses. Then you could append the poses into each individual character's file (and rename), and add additional character-specific thumbnail renders, or you could even share the same generic thumbnails and libraries across multiple characters by always appending in the same master pose library to an animation scene, and simply renaming the pose libraries to fit the character being used in that scene.
   • Cons: You have to do an extra step of linking in pose libraries, you have more files, risk of breaking links between files if any file is deleted or renamed.