Retain draggable positions on body turns

[maker_ryan]

Hi there.

I have a puppet which has 5 "head turn" positions for both the head and the body. The head uses the actual Head Turner behavior, but I have the body set to use key triggers.

Each body position (Frontal, Quarters, and Profiles) has its own arms, which are draggable. My question is, is there a way or approach to make it to where the positions I drag the arms to are retained as the body switches between views? E.g. if she's in Frontal and I raise her arm in a wave, and then want her to turn to Quarter Right, I want her arm to stay in that position (relative to the new view).

I realize this isn't straightforward because each view has its own set of arms, as I mentioned, so the Quarter Right version of the arm wouldn't directly know that the Frontal version of the same arm is raised.

How do you guys address this challenge? Or do you just record many separate takes and match up each draggable element through each body turn one at a time? That seems tedious, and likely that the end result wouldn't be very natural looking.

Is there a simpler way (or way at all) that I'm missing? Thanks! I can provide screenshots if that'd be helpful.

[oksamurai]

Yeah, there's not a great way to do this yet. The most convincing ones I've seen haven't been draggables, but key triggered arms. So maybe a W key signals a single layer wave or hand up in each view that is manually aligned. Personally I would do this or make sure your default position is something you're okay with transitioning between. I think Dr. Funkenstein in the Welcome start here tutorial in the app has a few body turns, maybe check out closer how she did it?

[maker_ryan]

Thanks Dave. I think for this particular project I'll be able to get away with restricting body turns to only when my puppet's arms are hanging neutrally, then only use arm motion within a single body position at a time.

But this is definitely something that will come up at some point, so it's good to keep an eye on the ball.