Do you know why I’m standing in most of my SL photos? Because poses in SL are terrible when your limbs bend in any way. I want to sit down. When I do sitting poses, my limbs go into each other or the clothes or the furniture. It’s all terrible. SL has advanced so much, but we’re still using the same old poses. When brands label their poses “bento poses” it really doesn’t mean anything. Unless it’s an animation specifically for a bento mesh object (like the mesh heads animations) – static poses are still crazy. They’re made exactly the same way they have always been, and they don’t look right. I’m so tired of editing my photos to look “not crazy” in sitting poses. I’m not great at redrawing an entire limb or sleeve in photoshop, so it will always look off.
Comment on this post if you agree about the poses not fitting, EVER!!!! What can we do, as a community, to make poses work better for all of us?
What I’m Wearing:
Truth – Cheri
Supernatural – My Diamonds Necklace #2, #G
Ricielli – Sweater
Ricielli – Adwoa Shorts
About Post Author
I think one of the big, and annoying issues, is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to standardize bento poses for the body. I’m probably saying that completely wrong, but what I mean is, I often see notecards and disclaimers with pose packs that state something along the lines of “you might have to mod your shape – this pose won’t fit everyone – sorry”.
It seems like some pose makers are putting out tutorials on how to edit your body to fit bento poses – which is fine but…not everyone is going to want to edit their body shape every time they want to use these poses. It feels, sometimes, like there’s enough work involved in that (the process of tweaking over and over to figure out what exactly needs to be adjusted to make the pose fit), that we, as a community, might as well just learn these animation programs and make our own poses that won’t require adjusting because they were created for our own avatars.
When mesh was a new thing, the community quickly turned to standardized shapes in order to fit the clothing – a lot of shape numbers had to conform or clothes wouldn’t fit.
Since fitted mesh and bento have hit the grid, I think a lot of us have moved away from that standardized system and are now enjoying the freedom we had pre-mesh of having our shape numbers be whatever we want.
I guess the point of my post is probably that, we would have to go back to some kind of standardized system so that bento poses pretty much fit everyone the same way and are predictable – and I don’t know about the community as a whole, but I personally don’t want to go back to that.
I’m fighting the same issue over and over, but found “AnyPose” and that really helps me a lot. A nice hud, and you can adjust what ever pose you are currently on, to get arms and legs where they should be . Problem really is, that you need the same shape as the pose creator to get the same look as they have. I haven’t found any that provide that information along with the pose, but it could be a huge help when you use sitting poses.
Until that happens, anypose is my solution and daily help
Hugs Freya ♥
I wholeheartedly agree with the above comment. I do a lot of roleplay and I’m also a photographer. I enjoy taking photos of the characters in my RP sim, where I play a nephilim — who is not a standard size, unless your standard is 8 ft tall and kinda bulky (and hot) with 12 ft wings. So yeah, standard poses just don’t fit.
While it’s not the easiest thing in the world to learn to make static poses, it’s certainly not the hardest either. A friend of mine and I work as a team to construct poses and then pretty them up in PS. I simply won’t redraw; it’s against my personal ethics as a photographer but I will do cleanup.
We all need to realize that there are only two ways to go: conform to them or have to freedom — which costs the time to DIY it. It all depends on what you want and how much you truly value the way you look.
Unless we all become exactly the same shape and size, poses will always have this issue and there is really nothing pose makers can do other than give multiple options for each pose with tiny little increment changes. Some pose makers give a “curvy” version of their pose but those are usually way too big for me and then regular one goes into my body sometimes. So the only possibility would be about 10 versions of each pose with tiny increments of arm angle change, etc. Even then, it STILL probably would not work for everyone, but definitely for more people. I use Anypose to edit poses and make them work perfectly with my body. I suggest everyone purchase at least the 1500L version of Anypose if you take pictures in SL.
I use Anypose, Fate (Hands), and many other huds / stands etc, Even using them still is sometimes frustrating for me with the poses. My avi is mostly thicker and curvy, Having to adjust sliders within shapes gets insane or having to change because of a said item clipping it takes from being yourself. If we all were to do the same shape given within the bodies / heads, We’d all look the same. It’s hit or miss with doing many attempts on poses and getting that perfect shot, even with doing different angles to maybe do a bit of justice, still doesn’t. I’m on for showing originality within second life with no photoshop, but there is many times I have to open it up just to fix a slight clip or issue. It’s insane, crazy, frustrating and sometimes chaotic ( when your inventory is exploded) to find the perfect ones just to get photos done and blog out.
I have AnyPose – love it. Useful for slight edits, but it can take ages to redo an entire pose, LOL.