Setting the Character’s Home (Default) Pose
If the character you’re preparing for Behavior will have skills associated with it, or you need to set the foot nodes, you must first set the character’s home pose. The home pose for a character is the starting pose that the actor will have in Behavior. It is used to define which side of the actor is its front and which is its top in Behavior. This information then allows Behavior to point the actor in the correct direction when it performs its skills, such as locomotion. Behavior also uses the home position as a default pose during a simulation when there is insufficient data for some behavioral task.
The home pose should be a “natural” resting pose for the character, and in a certain direction with respect to the global coordinates of the scene. A natural pose represents the amount of space that an actor in Behavior typically occupies, such as standing upright with the arms down by the sides.
When you choose the Set Home command, the home pose is set and the character’s hierarchy is modified so that the model’s node is at the origin, the GlobalSRT node is at the origin, and the COG node is directly above the GlobalSRT node. This modification is applied to optimize calculations that occur in Behavior during simulation.
However, there may be cases when you want to play back skills in Behavior and not have the character’s hierarchy modified—for example, prop actors with ambient animation or camera actors where the layout of the actor in the scene is the current location in XSI. In this case, press Shift while choosing the Set Home command to set the home pose, but leave the character’s hierarchy unmodified.
To set the character’s home pose
1. Make sure that the character is currently in the pose that you want as its home pose:
- The character must be facing in the (positive) global Z direction with its sense of up in the (positive) global Y direction; that is, the head must be above the feet in Y.
- The character’s feet should be on the ground plane.
- The character’s pose should be standing straight with its arms by its sides, not with the arms stretched out as many default character poses are in XSI for enveloping.
2. Make sure that the character has been initialized (see Initializing the Character).
3. Select the character and choose Actor > Set Home from the Behavior toolbar.
The character’s current pose is set as the home pose.
If you don’t want to have the actor’s hierarchy modified, press the Shift key while choosing Set Home to set the home pose without the hierarchy modification.
If you have moved the character around and changed its pose, you can easily put the actor back to its home pose that you had previously set.
For characters that are not yet Behavior-ready, the character cannot have embedded fcurves because it may conflict with returning to the home pose (putting the character in an odd pose). If this is the case, a message appears prompting you to remove the animation if the fcurves aren’t important or to store them in action sources.
To return to the home pose
1. Select the character whose home pose you want to return to.
2. Choose Actor > Go to Home from the Behavior toolbar.
The character returns to the pose that you set as its home pose.
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