for me and the type of gposing i do, less is more when it comes to expressions. still, i've tried to set myself up for success when adjusting them, so i'll share what i've got here.
quick preface: i use ktisis to pose. i've seen the layout for anam, but haven't used it, and i find brio's posing a bit too finicky for my liking. i use it for supplemental features, but not posing.
blue tips will be pretty accessible, and red tips are for those who don't mind fucking around and finding out, or putting in a bit more effort.
Filter the Visible Bones in Your List
No brainer, right? Looking at the left is a nightmare.
Do yourself a favor and only activate the group you’re working with, like the mouth group on the right.
Make an Expression Pack (or several!)
When it comes to expressions, the best advice I can give is: go through the vanilla expression emotes with your character and save them as .pose files. It’s a little time-consuming, but it WILL be worth it if you’re making enhanced poses often enough. And you don’t have to stop there–if there’s a full-on emote with an expression you adore, pause it during the expression and save it the same way. You can load that face onto other poses.
A note on pre-made expressions with the new face bones: Expressions will not carry across races, nor will they carry well across faces of the same race. This is particularly noticeable for the mouth. For that reason, you may want to label your expression folders like this:
Gender > Race > Face –or– Female > Viera > Face 4
Eye Movement with Sibling Linking
This has always been the go-to, but I think it’s good to share. There’s a button that lets you move one bone while also affecting its sibling bone (for example, you can move the left eye, and the right eye will move too).
“Link Rotation” will move the bones in the same direction. You will use this the most. “Mirror Rotation” will move them in opposite directions, but the amount of movement will be the same.
I use this for eyes and eyelids to ensure I’m getting even movements and looks across the board (like below), but it works for ears, limbs, hair, you name it! If there’s a left and a right version of the bone, they can be moved in tandem.
Mouth Movement with Position
With the new mouth bones, I’ve found position to be far more helpful than rotation. Switch your transform mode to position, zoom way in, and lift those lip corners, or shift them in or out.
Here's the expression we just made from a blank face!
Adjust Some Settings
Consider adjusting your settings so that the bones and their connecting lines fade or disappear while you’re mid-movement, so you can see things more clearly. Some folks don't want to dabble in settings at all, which is fine!! But if you have the time and inclination, try it out!
Try Bone Offsetting
This is a lifesaver. You can adjust the position of each dot, for a more clear view of them. This takes some time and patience, but I found it to be worth it because I'm always on that damn gpose.
ESPECIALLY useful for the eyes, where the bones’ default state is stacked on top of each other. I’ve also adjusted the abdomen/waist/lumbar area and viera ear bones to my taste.
Bone Offsets only affect the specific race and gender you adjust them on. Here you can see the pile of dots on the unadjusted fem miqo's eyes, and then the fem viera's bone dots spread out to more legible placements.
Hopefully this was somewhat helpful! Feel free to shoot questions my way anytime! 💗
She was sensitive to it after she was injured in the Calamity, but the physical fitness gained from her time as a gladiator and her conjury studies giving her better insight and ability to manipulate aether, she doesn't really get it anymore. She's not a big fan of aetheryte travel, but it's not a crippling aversion.
Altruizine had a varied professional career, to say the least, and her weapons reflect that. As a bard, her favored bow is the Yoichi, one of Gerolt's masterpieces and by far her most beloved weapon. She considers it an extension of herself.
She is first and foremost a white mage, though, and through her travels encountered many different staves and foci for her conjury. Of them all, she finds the Aymur easiest to attune to. It seems to have a soothing influence on the elementals, no matter where in the world she is (or even on other reflections), and they will listen and offer counsel more readily.
She does also enjoy the properties of the Cryptlurker's Crook, whose reinforced blunt head and straight shape makes it ideal for the occasional but very important task of smacking an opponent or a disobedient teammate.
Third is Aettir. Ardashir and Gerolt's little experiment, she somehow befriended the being within it. Despite this, she found the process of creating the Anima weapons an aberration, and decided Rowena should not be allowed to manufacture sentient arms. She convinced all involved that the weapons were not worth the arduous processes required to make them and kept the prototypes.
The mouth parts are too different so she can't speak it but Altruizine understands Ixal, since her tribe traded and collaborated with them often. Otherwise it's just whatever dialect of the Eorzean language used in Gyr Abania and little bits of Hingan and various common tribal words like greetings, thanks and such.
random ass picture. Iv said this before but this is Berry's canon outfit from like SHB and EW. I also have a more casual outfit but yea. Nothing beats this fit for me. I think it suits her as a rava but the color gold and white is important to her specific clan (Clan Sol) aswell.
oh. oh ya. he was a whole ass dude in 1.0 you could talk to and everything back when coerthas was lush and green and not a snow-blasted waste. i believe he had some speaking roles in the various job quests back then. nice guy! a friendly npc by all standards which is a shame given his eventual fate.
that said the lore around this guy is WILD. and dark. and surprisingly not that widely known. some ramblings below the cut due to disturbing content:
based on the journal pages left around dusk vigil, ser yuhelmeric went off the deep end after the calamity. his men were starving from the sudden eternal winter in coerthas, but he refused to abandon fort. there was a mutiny which he put down mercilessly which uhh... led to aforementioned cannibalism.
the dialogue from the quest-giver npc that you come across in the dusk vigil quest ("For all the nights to come") has some additional insight. an extremely corrupt inquisitor arrested his wife and confiscated the gem that was in their family for generations and presented on their wedding day. the inquisitor had it embedded in the statue of halone in dusk vigil. ser yuhelmeric wasn't allowed to take it back since it would be considered a desecration of a sacred monument. so it can be inferred that he stayed at dusk vigil to guard it until his dying breath.
by the time the wol is tasked with retrieving the jewel, he has turned into the ashkin foe that you have to defeat in the second boss battle of the dungeon. also, the shambling corpses that you fight inside the fort are members of his former garrison that starved and froze to death. lovely stuff, really.
