For anyone who wants a free pose-able human reference for drawing
The other day I came across this awesome program by accident (I donât even remember what I was actually searching for, but on the several times Iâve looked for a program like this Iâve had no luck). Itâs cool enough that I wanted to share it.
Itâs called DesignDoll (website here) and itâs a program that lets you shape and pose a human figure pretty much however you want.
Thereâs a trial version with no expiration date that can be downloaded for free, as well as the âpro licenseâ version priced at $79. Iâve only had the free version for two days so far, so Iâm not an expert and I havenât figured out all of the features yet, but Iâve got the basics down. The websiteâs tutorials are actually pretty helpful for the basics, as well.Â
Hereâs the page for download, which has a list of the features available in both versions.
There are three features the free version doesnât have:
Canât save OBJ files for export
Canât download models and poses from Doll Atelier (a sharing site for users; note that the site is in Japanese, though)
It canât load saved files
The third one means that if you make a pose, save it, and close the program, you canât load that pose/modified model later. You have to start with the default model. I found that out when I tried to load a file from the day before (this is why reading is importantâŠ). Whether saving your modifications (and downloading models and poses) is worth $80 is up to you.Â
But, the default model is pretty nice and honestly if all youâre looking for is a basic pose reference it should work fairly well as it is. Hereâs what it looks like:
Thereâs a pose tag that lets you drag each joint into place and rotate body parts. The torso and waist can be twisted separately, and it seems like everything pretty much follows the range of movement it would have on an actual human.
Even the entire shoulder area is actually movable along with the joint! See, like how the scapular area of the back raises with the arm:
The morphing tag is one of the coolest features, in my opinion. It lets you pick and choose from a library of pre-set forms for the head, chest, arms, legs, etc. It has some more realistic body shapes in addition to more anime-like ones. Donât like the options there? Mix a few to get what you want! Each option has a slider that lets you blend as much or as little as you want into the design.Â
So you, too, can create beautiful things like kawaii Muscle-chan!!
The scale tag lets you mess with the proportions and connection points of different joints. This feature combined with the morphing feature not only allows more body shape variations, but it also means that you can do things like make a more digitigrade model if you want. (The feet only have an ankle joint, but for regular human poses thatâs all that you really need, so whatever.)
Or you can make a weird chubby alien-like thing with giant hands and balloon tiddies if thatâs more your thing.
The ability to pose hands to the extent it allows is far more than I could have hoped for from a free program. Seriously, you can change the position of each finger joint individually, as well as how spread out the fingers are from each other. Each crease on the diagram below is a point of movement, and the circles are for spread between fingers.Â
And to make it a bit more convenient, thereâs a library of pre-set hand poses you can pick from as well, and then change the pose from that if you like.Â
In both versions, you can also import OBJ files from other places for the model to hold, like if you wanted to have them hold a sword or something.
Basically, this program is awesome and free and you should totally check it out if you want a good program for creating pose references.
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