Saving Poses

Once you’ve finished creating a pose, you may want to save it for future use. The problem is that saving poses in SimPose isn’t a matter of clicking “save pose;” it’s actually a two-step process. If you have no idea what that means, read the tutorial below to learn more.

Here is a pose I just made. I’d like to save it.

However, I can’t save the pose the way you would a regular file. (For example, click “save as”, then just name it.) I have to first create a “pose library.”

POSE LIBRARY, OR .PSL FILE

What is a “pose library?” A POSE LIBRARY is a file that holds a collection of poses. Think of a pose library as a “folder” that you put sets of poses in.

For example, let’s say want to save 7 different types of sitting poses. Instead of having 7 different files named “sitting1, sitting 2, sitting 3, etc…” what you do is first create a pose library called “sitting”, then save each new pose to this one pose library. Next time you want to access these poses, you can just choose to load  the Pose Library called “Sitting.” When you load it, you will then be able to select from this library which one of the 7 poses you want to use.

This is a great feature in SimPose. However, it confuses a lot of people new to the concept, so let’s do a run through to show you how saving poses is all done.

How to Save Poses in SimPose
  1. SELECT "STATIC--> NEW POSE LIBRARY"
    Before I can save my pose, I must create a new pose library for it--i.e., a file where I can store it and other poses.
  2. GIVE NEW POSE LIBRARY A NAME
    I will call this pose library "sharon."
  3. SELECT "STATIC--> SAVE POSE TO LIBRARY"
    Although I have created a new pose library, I haven't saved the pose I just made yet. So now I must save it to this new pose library and give it a name. (I will call it "pose1").
  4. KEEP CHOOSING "STATIC--> SAVE POSE TO LIBRARY" FOR EACH NEW POSE
    For every new pose I want added to the library, I will keep choosing this option.
  5. SELECT "STATIC--> SAVE POSE LIBRARY"
    This is the step that people always miss, a missed step that has caused countless hours of frustration for many newcomers to SimPose. Part of the reason is that there is a lot of confusion about what you are doing when you are saving poses to pose libraries. When you are saving poses to libraries, you are really adding them to the library, but you are not saving them to your hard drive. To permanently save these poses, you must save the pose library by choosing "Save Pose Library" to create a .psl file. So that's what I will do here. I will save it as "sharon.psl."

Now let’s say I have a brand new sim on stage who I want to use this pose for? Here is how I can do that:

LOADING A POSE
  1. SELECT "STATUS--> LOAD POSE LIBRARY"
    I need to LOAD the .psl file that the above pose ["pose1"] belongs t. To do this, I need to select "Static> Load Pose Library". When I do this, a new window opens showing a list of all available .psl files available.
  2. CHOOSE THE .PSL FILE YOU NEED
    I see the "sharon.psl" pose library, so I pick it to load into SimPose.
  3. PICK "STATUS--> SELECT POSE"
    Now I need to find the specific pose ["pose1"] to apply to my new sim, so I select "Static-->Select Pose". When I do that, I will see a list of all the poses I have saved to this library, including "pose1". I then pick "pose1". When I do the sim onstage will take the pose of the original sim on which it was modeled.

ONE LAST TIP

You do not always have to create a pose library whenever you want to save a pose; you only do this when you’ve got a pose, but don’t have a pose library for it. For example, if yesterday you created a pose library called “Sitting.psl” and today you want to add new poses to it, all you have to do is first load it into SimPose, then choose “Save Pose to Library” for every new pose you want to save to it.

 

Additional tutorials in the Ultimate SimPose Guide: