The Pose Editor
Despite the name, "Poses" aren't necessarily static. In TK17, "poses" are short animations (a single frame "animation" is a static pose) of your actors in differing situations.
"VX" & "V11" support up to 4 actors that are little more than poseable mannequins. The "Pose Editor" ("PE") uses the technique of "keyframe animation" to create motion. Animations are calculated using a computer method known as "tweening", where the computer calculates the actors' position between keyframes for you so you don't have to manually position your actors every single frame. For example, if you place your hand way over your head in one frame and then all the way down in another a few seconds later, the computer takes care of all movement in-between to perform a straight-line animation of your actor moving from Position 1 to Position 2 in that period of time. But if you position your actor in one location, then move them a few feet to the side, the computer WILL NOT have your actor turn & walk to the new location, they will simply slide to the new location as if on a conveyor belt. The rest is up to you. We can dream but if it were really that simple, you would lose a lot of your actor's control.
The Interface
TK17 has two different pose types: "Animation" & "Interactive". "Animations" are simple frame-by-frame animations that play straight through at a preset speed. "Interactive" poses however contain four color-coded "event loops" ("Normal", "Penetration", "Orgasm", and "Cooldown") that are each played at different times depending on the model's arousal. Also, unlike basic Animations, "Interactive" poses can control playback speed, while standard animations playback at just one speed. In addition to the four "Event" loops, any animation outside of those sections plays continually, so "events" actually overlap & modify the existing animation. As you might imagine, this makes "Interactive" poses extremely difficult to edit... enough for a tutorial all their own... so I will not be covering them in much detail here.
The PE starts with a timeline that is 12 "pages" long. Each "page" is 4 seconds (each second is divided into 24 frames, or key placements), for a maximum animation of 48 seconds at the default/slowest playback speed. But in the Sequencer, you can chain together as many poses as you like to make entire movies. The Pose Editor has the following sections:
1 - 3D Scene Area
2 - Animation Panel
3 - Toolbar
4 - Model you are posing
5 - Status HUD
6 - Timeline
1 - 3D Scene Area
Your selected room. When you selected PoseEdit from the Main Menu, you were prompted to select a room in which to create/edit your pose.
One "Room" that is available ONLY when selecting "PoseEdit" mode is the "Pose Edit" Room, a general purpose staging area in which most every possible pose can be edited (even poses incompatible with certain rooms). Useful for creating "general purpose poses" that you wish work in any room.
2 - Animation Panel
Shows the position/rotation of each body part as well as whether a Key has been assigned to that particular frame. The Pose Editor UI (User Interface) allows control of every aspect of animation poses for 1 to 4 characters.
(If you are editing a multi-actor pose, click the icon of the actor you wish to edit to activate them.)
The UI uses a collapsible menu system (default is all sections expanded):
The five icons across the top of the Pose Edit window (fig 2a) are: "New Pose", "Open Pose", "Save Pose", "Tag Editor" and "Key Editor".
The first three should be obvious. The "Tag Editor" is for adding/removing tags for sorting your poses (the TE button is buggy and not recommended).
The "Key Editor" is much more useful. Like the "Utilities" in fig 2c that allow you to group copy a select few predetermined body parts, the Tag Editor allows you to see ALL assigned keys for a single Actor at once, which you can Copy/Paste any combination of individual keys from one point in the timeline to any other (see the "Key Editor" section at the end of this document).
Extras - Limits a model's automatic movements during playback. If your pose does not assign certain movements to hips, head or breasts, they will move automatically in response to the movements of your pose. The model will turn to look at the camera if you move it during playback, and breasts will bounce if the body is moved quickly. You can disable these automatic movements by checking the appropriate box(es).
Hip Trigger - Enables/disables automatic hip movement between linked characters during sex. (UNCONFIRMED: Automatically creates "body shake" to simulate a "thrust" movement between linked actors so you don't have to animate it by hand.)
Head Rotation - Stop model from automatically turning head to look at the camera.
Breast Bounce Off - Stops automatic breast inertia movement during playback so only movement set by your pose actually takes place.
Utilities - These buttons bulk-copy the keys for the specified body part so that you don't have to copy them one at a time by hand. A time-saver.
Copy an entire collection of keys at once (such as the position of every finger on a hand). You can copy/paste the location/rotation of individual body parts by right-clicking the plus/minus/K (details below) of any body part and clicking "Copy" from the popup menu (Keys are pasted the same way). Handy for moving that body part back to the same location after moving it elsewhere.
But they only copy keys on the currently selected frame. If you didn't position that body part on the currently selected frame (see fig 5b 1 & 2), there will be nothing to copy/paste.
There are two ways to tell if a body part was moved on that particular frame: if the body part has a red "K" next to it in the Customizer window, or by clicking the "Key" (Key Editor) button to see all keys and the frames they were set on. Click on the column where the keys are set and you can either copy/paste them using the Key Editor or go back and use the buttons.
Note, changes following a "Paste" do not appear instantly. You must click elsewhere in the timeline and return to see the changes.
Pose 1 - When you make any adjustments to your model(s), those settings are recorded here. A red 'K' (Keyframe) automatically appears in boxes where a change was recorded. Set the current position as a key by clicking the box for that body part. Clear/delete that change by clicking it again.
For example, if you move a model's hand, a Key storing the hand's final position is recorded at that point in the timeline and the program will gradually move the hand from the position set in one key to the next.
If you want the hand to remain in place for a period of time before it starts moving, click on the box for that body part to set the key so it remains in that position until you want movement to begin.
Right-click on any key to Copy the location or rotation of that body part, which you can then paste further down the timeline to return that body part to the same position.
To the left of the "Key" boxes, is a bodypart icon and a "Change Tangent" box ("Interpolation"). The "Bodypart" icons do nothing and can be ignored. "Smooth" interpolation is the wavy blue line in the box, "Flat" is less wavy and "Linear" looks jagged.
(from the original documentation):
Keyframe Tangents and Interpolation
When we set keyframes in the Pose Editor or the Sequencer, we are creating movements at specific points in time. This could be the rotation of an elbow, the position of a hip, the amount of a facial sneer or the position of the camera, etc. In all of these cases we can also specify what happens between the keyframes. This is known as keyframe interpolation.
Smooth Interpolation
Let's start with a simple example:
Let's say you move the model's hand up and down a couple of times, setting keyframes in the timeline as you go.
By default, we will see smooth interpolation between the keyframes. This is essentially drawing a smooth curve as illustrated below. The purple dots are the keyframes and the short lines are the tangents which indicate the direction of the curve at each keyframe. The hand animation shows what this will look like on your model.
Tip: Where the curve is close to horizontal that is where the object is moving slowly. Where the curve is steep there is a lot of movement or speed. If the curve is flat there is no movement.
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I hear you out there saying "Huh?" To simplify, when using "Smooth" Interpolation, a body part eases into and then out of its movement as it nears its target position for more natural motion.
"Linear" interpolation maintains constant speed between keyframes looking very "robotic". "Flat" interpolation is kind of a hybrid of the other two types, moving "Smooth" at first, switching to "Linear" about halfway through. Why would you want this? This is good for "easing in/out" movement like pelvic thrusts, or if your body part overshoots and suddenly swings back to target. This is also a sign that your movement distance for that body part is too far for the amount of time you want to give it to go from point A to B, creating excessive speed.
Pose 2 -The Mannequin is a handy one-stop area where you can select the body part you wish to move to create your animation.
The "plus" sign buttons reveals the X/Y/Z "Translation" manipulator for moving body parts to a new location (see the section below on "Creating a Pose" for more detail).
The circular arrow buttons reveal the ball-shaped "Rotation" manipulator to turn that body part in a particular direction. If you aren't sure which body part a button manipulates, hover over it with your mouse and the name will appear in the upper left of your screen. Click & Hold the colored portion of the manipulator to move it in that direction.
When you make any adjustment, this automatically sets a keyframe recording your change (unless you turn off Automatic Keying by clicking the large key icon on the toolbar (see figure 1, item "3") or pressing "K" on your keyboard). See the green HUD (fig 1, item 5) to see its status.
Tip: You can undo accidental changes using Ctrl-Z. Hitting Ctrl-Z repeatedly will undo each change, but you only have limited undo levels. Also clicking one part, holding the Shift key and clicking another will combine them so they can be moved together.
New to VX/V11, across the top are icons to manipulate Masks, Helmets, Hats, Horns, Head Accessories, Crowns, Headsets, Hoods, Eye-wear, and Mouth Gag if attached. These allow you to create animations where your model can (for example) push their hat back or remove their glasses).
Toy box - When you link a "toy" to a pose (see "Toys" below) the icon for that toy appears in the box beside the mannequin, which you can position independently of your model.
The V11 Mannequin is essentially the same as the VX Mannequin with two noticeable differences: Labels for Right & Left, and the addition of A SECOND TOY SLOT! V11 now supports TWO toys per actor (8 per pose.)
fig 2f(2) - The V11 Mannequin
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"Hip Manipulation"
The two Hip manipulators in the center of the mannequin have the unique ability to move the entire model. Hold the Shift Key while adjusting the manipulators to move the entire model all at once. Release the Shift key to move just the hips themselves.
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Moving your pose: Click either of the "Location" arrows (figure 2g/2h) to easily move your pose through all of available preset "target" locations within a room/scene. If you are manually dragging a pose great distances using the GUI-axis-handles to position your pose, you are probably doing something wrong. (Note however some poorly-made custom rooms may have only one target "Location" dead-center of the room, in which case you may have to manually drag your pose great distances to the desired location within the scene).
It is possible to "fine tune" individual key settings NUMERICALLY by hitting Ctrl-A which will reveal the numeric X/Y/Z values of each key. You can Copy/Paste these values as well as Edit them by hand. A value of "0.00000" means no change.
Hit Ctrl-A again to toggle back to slider view.
ALL pose-edit sliders in all sections switch to numeric view while in this mode.
Limbs - You can make minor adjustments to your model's height/size using the "Limbs" sliders.
Note: Moving a slider to the left makes a limb Longer, while moving the slider to the right makes it Shorter... the opposite of what most users might expect.
"Height/Length" can be adjusted on both the X & Y axes to make body parts appear fatter/thicker if desired.
Be aware that if you shorten the legs of your model, the "origin point" of the feet does not move. It will drag the feet from the floor or other origin point leaving them floating in space and stretching right out, straining toward their origin point unless you physically move the body or move the feet (see "Hip Manipulation" above). If you lengthen the legs, they will bend at the knee instead of sinking beneath the floor or elsewhere.
Adjusting model height this way is not recommended since model height can also be set in the Customizer, producing unpredictable results in your pose. But it can be helpful for creating "growth" effects in real time.
Spine - Adjustments to the torso, both back & front, are made here.
This section is good for poses where the body must twist, curve, arch or slouch. Also note, sometimes models of differing heights will twist in odd ways when using a particular pose. Use the Spine controls to fix your model when this happens.
Face - Create facial expressions and even mimic mouth movement when speaking using these sliders.
Note: If you right-click anywhere in the room, you will get a pop-up menu that includes an option to set the model's "Emotion". This setting does NOT adjust these sliders and the facial expression will NOT saved with your pose, but it's useful as a template for making your own.
Tongue - Move & adjust the tongue during your pose.
Hand Left & Right - Adjust/position the fingers of each hand. Spread & Close are opposites, spreading the fingers wide or close together.
To grab or make a fist, use "Grip".
On the mannequin, there are also individual rotation manipulators for each finger, These manipulators do not have corresponding sliders. They are independent of one another.
Butt - Move, squeeze, flex the butt cheeks.
Extra - Most of these sliders do exactly what you expect.
Most importantly, this is where you attach, set and alter any Toy linked to your pose (see the "Adding toys to a pose" section below).
Once a toy is linked to your pose, you can alter its size/dimensions using the four "Tool" sliders.
(one toy)
(Note the toy selection fields
"Free Toy 1 & 2")
(Notice: The V11 "Extras" section only has ONE set of sliders to adjust Toy-1 size/width/height/depth. Toy-2's dimensions can not be adjusted, so assign your toys with this in mind.)
Handcuffs - This is where the head-gear translator positions are recorded. You can also add "handcuffs" to a pose by enabling them here.
3 - Toolbar
Across the top area series of buttons: Undo, Redo, Toggle Auto Key Creation, Toggle ability to change keys, Toggle object collision, Toggle moving of all actors together as a group, Show/Hide "manipulator", Switch to "position" manipulator (if available), Switch to "rotation" manipulator (if available), Show/Hide the built in Music Player controls, Show/Hide the Customizer GUI (F12), Show/Hide the different Media types, Export your pose in a special format that others can download/import, Take a screenshot using red/blue 3D tessellation, Show/Hide video recording, Take a screenshot (saved to the "Screenshots" folder in the TK17 Directory).
Next to that is an alternative room manipulator control (for times when a mouse is not available or impractical). This manipulator can optionally be hidden using the "Options Manager" if desired.
4 - Pose Area
The scene you are editing.
5 - Status HUD ("Heads Up Display")
In VX/V11, the HUD shows information about your current settings: the number of the frame you are on, and whether or not certain toolbar buttons are On or Off.
6 - Timeline
Animation is created by changing each actors position at different points in the timeline (4-seconds per page). The further down the timeline you make your change, the longer (slower) it takes for the actor to move into that position. Every colored hashmark is a "keyframe" marking a change in that actors' position.
Creating poses
fig 3a - VX Customizer
fig 3b - V11 Customizer
Buttons with a "+" are for moving body parts (or toys) up/down/left/right.
Buttons with a circular arrow let you set the rotation of a body part (or toy).
If you aren't sure what each button does, a "Tool Tip" appears in the upper left as you hover over each.
X/Y/Z positioning is called "Translation" (Rotation is of course called "Rotation"). Each type of positioning has its own Manipulator:
Using your mouse, click & drag the colored portion of the manipulator to move it along that axis. If "Automatic keying" (the "key" icon in the top center) is on, moving a manipulator will automatically set a key/hashmark on the timeline. Click anywhere along the timeline (the gray area) to set how long it should take the animation to reach that position. Note each "page" is 4 seconds long, so if you set your target position on another page, it will take your animation that much longer to move into that position.
The Pose Editor Timeline
The timeline uses key frame animation techniques to create Basic or Interactive animations.
Speed & Location controls
only visible when playing "Interactive" poses
in "FreeMode".
There are two types of animation that can be created: A “basic” animation plays straight through from beginning to end at a set speed, and "Interactive" which gives the user some control over the action.
An "Interactive" pose contains four "activity loops" ("Normal", "Orgasm", "Cooldown" & "Penetration" - see fig 5b-2 above) that are triggered by different levels of arousal. Users also have the ability to manually push actors using the mouse in real-time providing some control over playback (e.g. by putting your mouse on the hips of a character and moving back and forth, you can control the thrusting action) or use the "speed slider" so your actors move automatically.
Right-click on the first & last frames of your loops to set the beginning and end of each. As noted earlier, creation/editing of "Interactive" poses is much too complex a subject to cover in this Basic Documentation.
Note: EVERY body part is automatically assigned a Keyframe on the very first frame. That's why they all have "K"s on them. The program MUST have a key on the very first frame. You can change it, but not unset it.
If you collapse a section of the Pose Editor (see figure 2a), any key set in that section is hidden from the timeline. This can be helpful to avoid making accidental changes.
Use the "Play" (▶️) button to preview your animation (it will turn into a "Pause" (||) button during playback). Use ⏪ & ⏩ to step by keyframe (you can also use the comma & period keys). For "Interactive" poses, use the Movie "Clapper" (🎬) to preview your animation the way it would look in FreeMode or the Sequencer (Use the Esc key to exit this mode).
The computer automatically calculates the position of your actor(s) between keyframes to create movement. When the animation reaches the end, it automatically loops back to the beginning (playing repeatedly until you click stop). Because of this, it is important your first & last frames match so your actors don't "jump" if you want your animation to be a looping type. Right-click on any timeline keyframe to bring up a menu to copy/paste.
Note: You can easily delete all keys in a single keyframe on the timeline using "Shift-." (Shift+"decimal" on the keypad or Delete key). See the section on "Keyboard Shortcuts" for more. You can also select a position on the timeline and Shift-click on one further down the timeline to highlight all the ones you want. From there you can delete or Right-click on a set of keys for the menu. Also note, you can hide keys from Cut/Copy/Paste by collapsing the different sections in the menu:
Importing actors between poses: If you already have a pose/animation that you wish to apply to an actor in another pose, you can easily import that animation.
Start with a pose that has at least as many actors as the amount of timelines you wish to import. You can't apply an imported timeline to an actor that does not exist.
Click the "Open" folder to bring up the SexBrowser (titled "TK17 Browser" in V11.) if you are prompted to save your existing pose, it is recommended you do so now. Locate the pose containing the animation you wish to import (it does NOT need to be a single-actor pose).
Right-click on the pose containing the actor whose timeline you wish to import. (You need to know ahead of time which actor's timeline you wish to import and which actor of your target (loaded) pose you wish to assign it to).
Select the actor whose timeline you wish to import from the popup menu, and the target actor you wish to apply it to.
An example: I created a "Foursome" pose that has actors 1 & 4 in the "Cowgirl" position. I wish to import the same animation to a two-person pose using only actors 1 & 2:
Right-click the source pose. Hover the mouse pointer over the actor's timeline you wish to import.
Click the actor you want to receive that animation.
Save your completed animation. (If you wish to save a new copy of your pose, or wish to rename your pose, hold the Shift key when clicking the "Save" icon).
Note that any connections to limbs, body parts and toys will be lost in the imported actor timeline. You will have to recreate them.
The Key Editor
The "Key" icon seen in figure 5a/5b opens up the Key Editor allowing you to cut/copy/paste an entire block of keys (or multiple individually selected keys) all at once:
Key color pertains to the currently selected actor. The white line is the current position of your cursor on the timeline.
The Key Editor allows you to Cut/Copy/Paste an entire block of keys or multiple individually selected keys using the mouse (Left-click/drag to lasso a block of keys or select keys individually by holding Shift while clicking on each one. Right-click for a popup menu anywhere in the window to Cut/Copy/Paste the selected keys. (or use Ctrl-X/C/V). Wherever you Right-click to paste your keys is the point in time where your keys will be pasted (Ctrl-V pastes them at the current location the white timeline bar). You do not need to precisely click along the horizontal position of a particular key to ensure they are pasted in the right place.
Adding toys to a pose
"Toys" are 3D objects (dildos, whips, even furniture, creatures, cars etc). that can be added to a pose/animation. Each actor can have ONE toy linked to them, but are not limited to use with that one actor. How that toy functions is set by you during pose creation.
To add a toy to a pose, scroll down to near the bottom of the Animation Panel (fig. 7) to the section titled "Extra". The last line is "Free Toy". Click the "link" button and a "Connect To" pop-up menu appears. Every actor in your scene will appear in a sub-menu. Point to the actor you wish to associate with a toy and another sub-menu asks you to specify what body part the toy should be linked to (or use "Free Toy" if you do not wish to associate it with a particular body part).
The process for adding/assigning "Toy-2" in V11 is the same as adding "Toy-1". Note however, once a toy is assigned, it can not be used again.
If a toy is linked to a particular body part, moving that body part also moves the toy (but NOT vice versa. Moving the toy itself allows you to position it without moving the body part it is linked to). If you initially chose "Free Toy" and did not link it to a body part, moving body parts will have no effect on the location/rotation of the toy.
The default toy is a generic blue tube. To change the toy to something else, click the Toy link button again for a list of available toys. Click "Change Toy" for a scrolling list of installed toys.
Toys automatically appear in the exact center of the pose's starting location (bed, wall, sofa, etc.) at "foot" level. If an actor or room feature is obscuring that location, you may not be able to see the toy until you relocate it.
Scroll back up the Animation Panel to the mannequin (fig 2f). The toy you selected should be displayed in a box in the same window with buttons beneath it for Translation ("position") and Rotation. Click one to make the manipulator for that toy appear.
When you move a toy, it sets a key in the timeline just like moving any body part. The selected toy and it's positioning will be saved with your pose. Anyone you share that pose with must also have that toy installed for the pose to display correctly.