Why so often weird looking poses when a character is doing something physical?

[Deleted member 3621057]

I have a little pet peeve that I felt the need to air, and discuss, if there anone else feel the same way.

In my opinion and experience, when characters in 3DCG games are doing something physical, they are quite often posed in bad or absurd ways. Mainly when characters are doing physical exercises or doing martial arts or fighting moves. I think I have seen this more often and worse with renders done in Illusion-engines, but it does happen on DAZ renders too.

I have been of two minds on whether to give specific examples from games, but decided not because I felt the risk of this becoming to mean-spirited. On the other hand, if most people don't agree with me that this is common, I guess I will have to give examples to show what I mean.

For now, maybe I'll just ask the ppl who are experienced in working with 3DCG:
IfI am right and this is common, why does this happen? Is it very hard to create original poses in the different engines? Are you locked-in to pre-created poses, and are those too few? Is the knowledge of human body mechanics lacking amongst game devs, or even lackning amongst the engine creators?

 

[AetherL]

Some can use premade pose (and they are maybe bad) and some not. Nothing that lock you into it for daz3d but making poses is time consuming so using premade can be the best way for developpers that's don't focus on this on the game. Ofc if its a game that talk about that, that's more problematic.
But to be honest i don't know what you're talking about. Maybe i think its good when its not... But nothing come to my mind when i think about weird pose for physical activity.

Maybe some exemple, yeah. Or not ^^

 

[CocoVC]

I can't speak for Illusion games, but for DAZ-specific renders there are a lot of premade poses out that are just...bad, really. They're more for glamour shots than actual physical actions. So the hands don't look right, the feet are made for high heels, and the expressions are exaggerated. In addition, most of the premade poses are done on the default character, so adjusting the pose for different body types can result in awkward 'barbie' poses.

 

[rk-47]

You mean when their eyes are shot wide and mouths are extremely open yeah thats funny to see during fight scenes, its all exaggerated tbh

 

[woody554]

one reason is that almost all pose packs are pretty horrible and useless, and they should only be used as a starting point rather than as they are.

but the second problem is that making those correct looking poses requires just as much classical art training as drawing them. otherwise you simply can't see how they should look. and unfortunately that's not a skillset most people have.

it doesn't help that the anatomy of the models is wrong to begin with, and often can't be posed correctly even if you knew what you want. so you try to find a compromise and hide the problems with suitable camera angles and so on, but sometimes you just can't find a good solution.

 

[Beatrix Kiddo]

Pose libraries (as most libraries of any kind) tend to be filled with not so high quality items.

And for handcrafting poses, well my guess is a mix of few things: most devs might not be too familiar with body anatomy and movement (heck, I even doubt they use their own body and a mirror for reference), the possible limitations of the software of choice, and the time constraints each dev puts upon themselves.

 

[Carrera]

Because people don't understand anatomy and how the body works.