Changing Reference Poses

After an envelope has been assigned, you can change the reference pose of the envelope. The reference pose is the stance that the envelope and its deformers return to when you use the Reset Actor command. It is also the pose that determines the initial weighting of points to deformers based on proximity.

1. Select the envelope.

2. If desired, mute the envelope deformation. This temporarily prevents the deformation of the envelope and gives better visual feedback. To do this, do one of the following:

   • In an explorer, right-click the Envelope Operator and activate Mute.

     or

   • On the Select panel, choose Selection and click the icon of the Envelope Operator to open its property editor. Activate the Mute option. Click the Lock icon to prevent this property editor from being recycled so that you can easily unmute it later.

3. Adjust the positions of the deformers and envelope as desired.

4. Do either or both of the following:

   • If you have moved a deformer, then to reset its reference pose, select it and choose Deform Envelope Set Reference Poses from the Animate toolbar. Repeat for other deformers as necessary. Note that you can also branch- or tree-select deformers in hierarchies before choosing this command, as well as select a group containing the deformers. For chain elements, make sure to reset the reference pose of the whole chain, including the effector.

     and/or

   • If you have moved the envelope object or points on it, then to reset its reference pose, select it and choose the Deform Envelope Set Reference Poses again.

   If the envelope weights have not been frozen, the initial weights are recalculated based on the relative positions of the new reference poses of the deformers and envelope. Any manual adjustments you made to the deformer assignments and envelope weights are preserved.

5. Unmute the Envelope Operator.