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I've been working on adding physical projections of what is going to happen.

In the previous version of The Most Poser Heroes, there was a lot of "guessing" of what was going to happen. You had to really understand the behavior of the physical bodies to move your character in a coherent way. This was something that even professional animators had problems with (since they were not used to physics interfering in their work).

This used to be the game cycle:

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1. Move one or more limbs (one by one).
   
2. Press play to see the results of your changes.
   
3. Stop the movie.
   
4. Go back to the frame you were working on.
   
5. Back to step (1).
   

All these steps made the game VERY tedious

. There were so many places you could go wrong: wrong movement (very common), forget to press play to actually see the simulation, forgetting to go back to the frame you were working on (this was very common when all the last frames look the same, for example, when the character is stuck; so the player assumes he is working at the right time, but actually he is at the end of the animation).

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And considering that

[/font][/color]most players completely failed at Step (1)[color=rgb(102,102,102)][font=verdana]

, this cycle repeated a lot of times.

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So here come the changes I've made so far:

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• IK controls: as I mention in my previous post, now you can control the whole limb with a handle, instead of part by part.
  
• No need to "play": After a change, if you forwards in time, you will se the results. "Updating" is no longer needed.
  
• Automatic "go back": This is tricky, sometimes the player stops the movie because he doesn't like the results; other times because he is pleased with the results and wants to start working at a different frame. For now, if you press stop you go back to the last "dynamic frame"... that is, where the character did a significant movement.
  
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  These changes prevent some mistakes, but the cycle was only slightly smaller. That is, step (4) was eliminated and step (1) was simplified. Nothing else.

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  So here comes the most drastic change ever.

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  [color=rgb(102,102,102)][font=verdana]Physical projections:[/font][/color]
  
  

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  You can see that every time you move a limb, the simulation is run behind and a silhouette shows you what will happen!

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  So now, even if you have no idea what you are doing, you can see if it's working, and retry very easily.

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  So the current cycle is:

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  1. Move the entire limb using the IK.
     
  2. Go back to (1)
     
  
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  Much better**! Right? Are you happy? Because I AM! Time for chocolate.

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  [size=2][color=rgb(102,102,102)][font=verdana]** I haven't tested this with actual users yet... so maybe I'm celebrating too early.[/font][/color]
  
  [size=2]Follow me @stochasticlints for updates.
  [size=2]Visit themostposerheroes.com for more info about the game.