Introduction

Hello!! I'm Ichinoyonjo, and I mainly offer 3D pose materials on CLIP STUDIO ASSETS.

I'm currently looking for tips on "How to draw dynamic poses", and since my popular material "Slightly Useful Pose Collection vol.1" has now surpassed 50,000 downloads, I'd like to show you how I normally create 3D pose materials.

If you find it difficult to draw natural full-body poses, and want to use a 3D drawing doll, but find it difficult to operate them...I hope this will be helpful for those of you in this situation.

 

Please also take a look at the "Slightly Useful Pose Collection" series for reference!!

◆①Draft

This time, we will proceed with the assumption that we will create a new pose to draw a standing character.

That said, the first thing you should do is make a rough draft rather than preparing a 3D drawing figure.

Even if you are creating a pose from scratch with a 3D drawing figure, it will be much easier if you draw a rough outline of the concept to some extent.

Operating a 3D drawing figure for a long period of time can put a strain on the CPU, causing it to slow down.

We recommend keeping the canvas size small to reduce the strain on the CPU.

You can change the canvas resolution after the pose is complete, so to start with, choose a size of around 600 x 800.

Roughly sketch out the pose you want to create.

 

To create an attractive pose that doesn't feel awkward, it's effective to keep in mind the following points:

 

1) Make sure the body flows smoothly (red lines)

 

2) Twist the torso so that one shoulder and hip come together and the other side move apart (blue lines)

 

3) Create an exaggerated arch (green lines)

◆②Basic operation of 3D drawing doll + angle adjustment

We will explain again how to operate the basic 3D drawing doll.

If you are already familiar with the other TIPS, you can skip this section as appropriate.

The 3D drawing figure can be found in the "3D" → "Body Shape" tab in the "Material" palette.

If you drag and drop it from here onto the canvas, the 3D drawing figure will be reflected on the canvas.

The blue icon displayed at the top of the 3D drawing figure is the "movement manipulator."

Click and drag here to adjust the camera angle and the position of 3D objects.

The particularly frequently used "camera rotation" and "camera movement forward and backward" can be achieved by left-clicking and dragging or right-clicking and dragging on empty space, respectively.

In addition, you can adjust the "perspective" by rotating the cursor wheel.

A setting of 1.0 will give you a telephoto effect with no perspective at all, while increasing the number will give you increasingly dynamic perspective.

First, try using these to move the camera so that it is at an angle similar to the pose you want to create.

 

Before moving on to operating the 3D drawing figure, we will briefly explain the characteristics of 3D drawing figures.

You can move the joints of the 3D drawing figure by clicking and dragging its parts or operating the manipulator, but there are a few behaviors you need to be aware of in order to move it the way you want.

First, the default 3D drawing figure is fixed based on the pelvic joint.

 

So, if you move both legs by clicking and dragging, this alone is enough, but if you do the same with the upper body such as the head or arms, the whole body will be pulled and it will not work as expected.

 

If you want to adjust the upper body by clicking and dragging, you need to change the joint to be fixed to eliminate this specification. How to do this will be explained in a later procedure.

 

※Added 4/2025

 

If you are using Ver.2.3 or later, you can intuitively operate the head and arms by clicking and dragging as they are!!

 

Although it is an outdated description, the procedure described below is still an effective technique for adjusting the fingers, so I will leave it here as a technical archive.

If you click a joint once, a "manipulator" made up of three circles will appear.

If you operate the manipulator in this state, you can move only that joint, but if you try to create a pose using this operation from the beginning, it will tend to result in an unnatural pose that ignores muscle movement and the center of gravity.

 

If you click a joint twice, an "animation controller" made up of several blue circles, and a "root manipulator" made up of four circles and six-directional arrows will be displayed.

By clicking and dragging the animation controller, you can move multiple joints and adjust the position of the arms, legs, torso and gaze, or by operating the manipulator that appears after clicking, you can add a twist to the torso.

It is recommended to use this operation if you want to roughly adjust the pose.

The torso animation controller is particularly useful for creating attractive poses.

 

With simple operations, you can create the "twists and arches of the torso where one shoulder and hip come together and the other move apart," which we pointed out earlier to keep in mind when drawing the rough sketch.

 

However, one drawback of using an animation controller is that it ignores the human range of motion of the joints.

 

This is easy to understand when moving the arms, but it doesn't care if the joints are buried inside the body.

 

The ignored range of motion will be corrected so that it doesn't exceed the limits when moving the joints with other operations, but this can also cause the pose you were creating to fall apart. Keep this in mind.

◆③Create the overall pose

Keeping in mind the characteristics of 3D drawing dolls, let's start by roughly recreating the pose in the draft.

 

Drag the legs directly and use the animation controllers to move the arms to the approximate position.

You can also move the angle to the side and pull the torso animation controller towards you to create a lively posture with the chest out.

Conversely, to create a pose that looks as if the character is bracing themselves, you can pull it back or down to bend or drop the waist.

The single animation controller at the far end moves the line of sight. You can also adjust the tilt of the neck, so adjust it to the just right angle.

The general pose has been created.

Now it's time to add the details.

◆④ Adjust the legs

As mentioned above, the default setting for 3D drawing figures is that they are fixed at the pelvis, so it is recommended to start by adjusting the legs.

Click on the thigh joints and use the manipulator to open the legs.

Generally, it looks better if the feet are turned slightly outward.

For female characters, it may be a good idea to have the legs turned inwards, depending on how far the legs are opened and bent.

When you click and drag to move the knee joints, they will move with some slack so that they stand naturally upright, but you can make them taut by using the manipulator. They will be forced to move slightly inverted. Be aware of the "curvature" that was pointed out in the rough draft when making adjustments.

It is also important to manipulate the foot joints to adjust so that the feet are firmly on the ground. It is easier to do this if you set the perspective to 1.0 and operate at an angle where the grid looks horizontal.

While adjusting any parts that extend below the grid, press "Place model on floor" in the "Object launcher" displayed at the bottom of the 3D drawing figure to check that it is properly grounded.

◆⑤ Adjust your arms and fingers

As mentioned briefly earlier, here's how to effectively control the arms by clicking and dragging.

 

❶ Click the chest joint.

❷ Click "Toggle selected joints locked" in the Object Launcher.

❸ Click the abdominal joint just below the chest.

❹ Lock the joint using the same operations as ❷.

 

You'll then be able to move only the arms by clicking and dragging.

Dragging the shoulders will cause the body to move a little, but everything else is comfortable to control, making it much easier to make adjustments. It's worth remembering.

Note that if you try to move the legs by clicking and dragging in this state, the torso will end up being pulled instead.

Be sure to switch which joints are locked depending on the part you want to adjust.

Once you've adjusted the position of the arms, the next step is to fine-tune the hand pose.

There is a "Hand Pose" item in the "Tool Property" palette, so first use this to open and close the hands.

Hand pose operations will only affect that hand if you select the joints of one arm, but will affect both hands if you select joints in parts of the body other than the arms, such as the head or legs. Be careful not to overwrite a good pose you've worked out for one hand by adjusting the other hand.

You can make fine adjustments to the fingers by clicking the chain icon at the top of the hand pose to control the opening of each finger individually, but as an alternative, you can use joint fixing, as we did when adjusting the arm earlier.

 

❶ Unlock all joints from the Object Launcher.

❷ Click the palm joint.

❸ Fix the joint.

❹ Click the forearm joint.

❺ Fix the joint.

 

You will then be able to move the fingers by clicking and dragging.

If you move any finger other than the middle finger, the palm will move in conjunction with it to some extent, but for the most part you will be able to bend and straighten the fingers comfortably.

Use the manipulator to adjust the finer details.

To achieve natural and attractive finger movements, try to be conscious of giving each finger a different flow.

Your index and middle fingers in particular should be tense, while your ring and pinky fingers should be slightly relaxed to create a natural finger movement.

 

◆⑥ Adjust the head

Just like when adjusting the arms, if you fix the two joints on the chest, you will be able to move the head by clicking and dragging.

The joints in the head and neck have a wider range of motion than other parts of the body and are therefore more delicate, so it is easier to move them intuitively by clicking the top of the head rather than the area around the jaw.

The angle of the head and neck is already decided at Step 3, but let's adjust it so that it looks more natural.

After some fine-tuning, the pose looked like this.

If you can create a pose that looks attractive from various angles, then your drawing is complete!

You can also bring out a different flavor by using stronger perspective.

This makes it easy to draw dynamic poses.

◆⑦Register as pose material

We recommend that you register any poses you create well as materials so that they can be reused.

This time we created a pose from scratch, but if you apply the pose material to a 3D drawing figure and then adjust the details, you can create a variety of poses in a shorter amount of time.

 

Before registering the pose material, save an image to use as a thumbnail.

From the "Edit" tab, select "Change image resolution" and "Change canvas size" and enter a canvas size of 240 x 240.

It's easier to first use "Change canvas size" to change the ratio to a square and then change the resolution.

Save the resulting 240 x 240 canvas in jpg format.

Once the image has been saved, click "Register full body pose as material" from the object launcher.

The "Material Properties" will open, so enter the necessary information.

It is useful to give specific material names so that they are easier to find in searches.

Click the file button next to "Material Image" to open the thumbnail image you saved earlier. This will make it easier to see what kind of pose it is in the list of materials.

For the "Material Save Destination" on the right, we recommend selecting "3D" → "Pose" → "Full Body".

 

It will be easier to narrow down your search by adding search tags based on other downloaded materials.

For reference, I personally tag all pose materials with "3D", and to narrow down whether they are full body poses or hand poses, I tag them with "Full Body" or "Hands".

Other commonly used tags include "Standing", "Sitting", "Holding", "Battle", "Battle", "Action", "Jumping", and "Floating".

The "Slightly Useful Pose Collection" series always includes floating poses, for some reason.

◆⑧Adjustments for practical use

That covers how to create pose materials, but materials are just materials.

The ultimate goal is to use them to complete an illustration.

So, we'll also explain how to make adjustments after applying the pose material.

You can adjust the body shape of a 3D drawing figure from the "Tool Property" palette.

It is possible to make the body shape match your own drawing style, but doing so can often make the applied pose look unreliable.

Rather than using the pose material as is, we recommend adjusting it to suit the body shape.

Use the animation controller to adjust the pose so that it looks good.

Poses with arms or legs crossed, or hands resting on the legs, in particular, will have a large margin of error depending on the body shape, so it's important to correct them each time!!

Depending on the pose, you may want to include any belongings or equipment in the sketch.

In such cases, 3D primitives are useful.

A variety of shapes are listed in the "3D" → "Primitive" tab of the "Material" palette, so just drag and drop them onto the canvas.

You can freely adjust the size and length of 3D primitives by using the manipulator.

For example, you can use a "prism" as a reference for a weapon by stretching it out into a long, thin shape, rotating it, and moving it so that it fits in the palm of your hand.

You can also use it as a guide for high heels by shrinking it, copying and pasting it, and moving it to both heels. By using this primitive as a reference and adjusting the heel angle again, you can easily create a pose with high heels that are neatly planted on the ground.

 

There are also many other things you can do with 3D primitives, depending on your ideas.

The thumbnails of each pose included in the "Useful Pose Collection" have also been used as example uses, so please use them as reference.

Once you've made any final adjustments to the pose, change the image resolution.

Layers containing 3D objects will behave like raster images unless they are selected.

If it's still too slow, you can right-click on the layer and select "Rasterize" to turn it into a completely raster image.

However, this will cut off the area outside the canvas and prevent you from modifying the pose later, so this is only a last resort.

All that's left to do is use the 3D drawing doll as a reference to draw a standing figure!!

Good job!!

 

Please use these tips as a reference and make use of the drawing dolls and pose materials!!

And eventually, sell the materials to help other creators!!