How to POSEFY: Tutorial for creating 3D postures and animations

Are you new to POSEFY? 

Welcome. We've prepared this simple tutorial for creating static postures and animated sequences just for you. It's really easy, and after a few tries you will be creating left, right and center. Don't be shy!

1) Create your POSEFY account and sign in

To be honest, the only thing that you really need in order to create static 3D postures and cool animated sequences is a free POSEFY account.

Create a free account and sign in

You can create a POSEFY account here, or simply use your Facebook credentials to sign in. Creating an account on POSEFY takes less that 1 minute and we only require 3 things from you: 

(1) a valid e-mail address 

(2) the public username you wish to use on the Site 

(3) a password. 

That’s it. We don’t care about what school you went to, your date of birth, your mother’s maiden name or the age of your cat.

And relax. We won’t sell, forward or share your e-mail address or bombard you with unsolicited mail. That’s not why we created POSEFY.

After creating your account, sign in over here. You will be able to create your first posture by clicking on the “CREATE” link that you’ll locate on the top navigation menu.

2) Creating your first static posture

In its simplest form, a static posture can be used to illustrate a specific exercise or pose where the sequence of movements is not important. We don’t really care about how to get into that position, or how to get out of it; what matters is the position in itself or a specific snapshot in time.

However, static postures are also useful in POSEFY because they constitute the individual “frames” or “building blocks” of animated sequences. Animated sequences are basically a succession of several static postures played in order, one after the other.

So, whether you’re simply illustrating a specific pose or piecing together the building blocks of an animated sequence, your POSEFY adventure will start with a static posture.

After signing in and clicking on the “CREATE” link, you will see a virtual dummy in a natural, standing position. We call this the canvas, and this is where the magic begins.

Click on Create to start the fun.

3) Basic maneuvers

There are several basic maneuvers that you can try out when creating a static posture:

• To change the 3D perspective of your scene, simply click and drag on any part of the canvas other than the dummy. We call this “orbiting”. Note that you are really not manipulating the dummy or its surroundings, just changing the camera’s point of view.

Click on any part of the canvas other than the dummy and drag to orbit

• Click once on any part of the dummy and drag it across the canvas to reposition it anywhere you want. The dummy can be moved both vertically and laterally.

• Click on the “+” and “-”arrows on the upper right-hand side of the canvas to zoom in and out of your scene. 

Directional arrows (shift scene position) and zoom controls

• Use the directional arrows on the upper right-hand side of the canvas to shift the entire scene (both the dummy and its surroundings) up, down, left or right.

• Once you’ve achieved the desired perspective, you can start working on the posture itself. The dummy has 16 articulated joints that you can manipulate in 3D space. Simply click on any one of these joints to select, and then use the tri-axis controller that pops up to move the joint in 3D space.

Click on joints to bring up super duper tri-axis controller

• The abdomen works slightly different than the rest of the joints on the body. By clicking on the abdomen and then using the tri-axis controller you will be able to move the entire dummy "in one piece". This can be useful, for example, if you wish to create a lying down posture.

Use the abdomen controller to move the entire dummy in one piece.

This part will probably require some getting used to at first, but after a couple of tries you’ll get the hang of it.

3D space visualization does not necessarily come naturally to everyone, but after a bit of practice you’ll be able to configure the dummy in any position you want.

4) Save your posture

Ready? Once you’ve configured the dummy in the position that you want it, go ahead and save your posture. You will be required to fill in a name and a description for your posture, classify it in the most appropriate category and fill in a couple of tags to make it easier for others to find your posture on POSEFY.

5) Share your posture

Once you’ve saved your posture, you will be able to view it under the “MY POSTURES”  tab which you will find across the top navigation menu.

Clicking on a posture from “MY POSTURES” will take you to the posture landing page. From there, you will be able to edit or share your posture across several of the most popular social networking sites. Currently we support Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus. 

Posture and Sequence Landing Page

 If you have a blog or website, we encourage you to share the posture by using the “embed code” similar to what you would do with a YouTube video.

6) Create a multi-posture animated sequence

Immediately after creating and saving a static posture, a blue movie reel icon will appear in the top-left corner of your canvas. You can also arrive here by going to “MY POSTURES”, clicking on the static posture that you want to animate to access the landing page, and then clicking on the orange “Edit” button.

By clicking on the blue movie reel icon in the top-left corner of the canvas you will effectively be adding a new frame to the existing posture, thus converting your static posture into an animated sequence. When doing this, a timeline will appear beneath the canvas displaying all of the individual postures in your sequence.

The infamous timeline

You can add up to 10 static postures in your animated sequence by clicking on the blue “+” button in the timeline. Each new posture added to a sequence will be an exact duplicate of the previous posture in the timeline, which you will then be able to adjust in the canvas.

You can also drag and drop individual frames across the timeline to change their position within a sequence, delete individual frames by clicking on the orange “x” icon or change the transition speed between postures by clicking on the blue “-” icon in between postures (speed between postures is set to constant by default, you may select increasing speed or decreasing speed).

7) Review your animated sequence

Use the player directly below the canvas to review your animated sequence at any time. Click on the blue translucent “play” “pause” “stop” and “replay” buttons to control the playback of your animation.

At any time during the animation, you can click and drag on any point in the canvas to orbit that specific frame in 3D space while playing your sequence.

Fingers crossed. It's time to try the player

8) Save and Share

When you’re satisfied with your sequence, don’t forget to save it! At any time you can edit the animated sequence, add and remove frames by going to “My Postures”.

And please, spread the love by sharing your postures and 3D animated sequences. Remember that POSEFY supports sharing on several popular social media networks and also embedding in third-party blogs or websites.

Have fun. 

POSEFY in the news

Greetings POSEFYers! 

We’re happy to announce that POSEFY is quickly gaining momentum, thanks in part to a couple of media outlets that have recently featured our service. 

Wwwhat’s New, a prominent website that has been covering startup activity in Spain and Latin America since 2005, referred to POSEFY as a promising and innovative tool that can enhance value for professionals in a number of sectors such as fitness, yoga and physical therapy. 

Fisionenap.com, a website specializing in the use of emerging technologies for the physical therapy community, also featured POSEFY as a great alternative to the traditional tools used to illustrate postures and exercises for a healthy living. 

Our User base is increasing at a steady rate, and we are receiving excellent feedback from the Users that have tried our most recent feature: animated 3D sequences. 

Have you tried POSEFY already? Please let us know what you think!

POSEFY: The first 100 postures

POSEFY has been live for just under two months now, and we’re definitely proud of the initial results.

We have attracted early-adopters from all around the world who have already created over 100 postures on the site, and we continue to be wowed by the amazing content that they are creating on POSEFY.

The site has proved to be stable and, what’s more important at this stage, we’ve received extremely valuable feedback from our initial Users which we are quickly implementing to improve the overall experience.

Over the coming weeks we will add two very important features that many Users have requested: the ability to embed 3D postures on third-party websites and the creation of sequences from several static postures.

We will shortly explain these new features in greater detail, but for the time being we can confidently say that they will give Users more freedom to create whatever is on their mind and showcase their creations throughout the web.

Thank you very much for your support, and please remember to leave us your feedback!

And we’re LIVE!

Dear POSEFYers, beta testers, team members, friends & family:

Reid Hoffman of LinkedIN allegedly once said that if you are not ashamed of your product when you launch it, you probably waited too long to launch.

It’s been a pretty long journey for us here at POSEFY, and we’ve only just started. Although we have a (“very”) long list of exciting features that we’re really eager to W O W you with, POSEFY wants to come out of the box. And who are we to stop it? The first version of POSEFY is ready. And it needs your love.

Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t – we really hope that you do – but we’ve put in a tremendous amount of effort and would really love it if you could give it a go.

We believe that POSEFY not only improves the way in which people can teach and learn all kinds of postures involving the human body, but it is also a step towards a new and enhanced web where 3D visualization improves User’s experiences and allows creative people to do new and cool things.

We are far from perfect and there will be bugs; hopefully little ones, but maybe even big ones. Please let us know how we can improve POSEFY, or what extra features would you like to see in the near future. We are looking forward to hearing from you, and we promise to take your feedback very seriously.

Thanks very much for your support, The POSEFY Team.

So, what’s wrong with video?

The idea for POSEFY started evolving several years ago, after a visit to my chiropractor. I have been suffering from cervical spine problems for half a decade, probably owing to a really defective posture while sitting at my desk. Although this is not a life-threatening illness, it is accompanied by rather unpleasant symptoms including dizziness and recurring headaches.

Apart from showing me correct posture techniques, this chiropractor suggested that I perform several exercises consisting in stretching my neck and upper back muscles on a daily basis. After a couple of days, I felt a significant improvement in my symptoms and I was eager to share these exercises with others who I knew were suffering of similar complaints.

Over and over again, when I called these people and tried to explain everything that I had learnt from my physician, I heard crickets. They found it very difficult to visualize the exercises and postures I was trying to explain in words. The response I got after several unsuccessful attempts was “why don’t you record a video and show me?”

I thought about it for a while, but there were just too many obstacles. To name a few:

• As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, we at POSEFY believe that the future of the Internet is 3D. Online video is great, but although resolution and load times have improved substantially over the past 10 years, it is still flat. This makes video an OK, but crippled, way of learning stuff.

• While most people nowadays have access to video recording equipment (heck, most of us carry a smartphone in our pocket that can get the job done) professional quality videos continue to require expensive hardware that not everyone can afford. I might consider this kind of equipment if I’m planning a really ambitious vidcast, but not if I just want to show my brother on the other side of the Atlantic how to stretch his neck properly.

• Production quality greatly affects the credibility of a video, in particular if that video is trying to teach someone something. You can have the best Yoga professor in the world showing you how to perform an Asana but if the man/woman is scruffy, the audio is unlevelled, the background music is corny and the room looks scruffy and poorly lit, it will be very difficult for your audience to see past this and focus on the actual teachings of the master.

• Very few people get the perfect take in one shot when recording video; chances are you’ll mess up a few times, the phone will ring in the background, a passing cloud will ruin your lightning… All in all, it will take more than one take to successfully record something remotely like what you are hoping to transmit.

I was not going to go through all of this, but I still thought that I could help many people with what had been taught to me so instead of recording the video we decided to put a great team together and start working on POSEFY.

Learning and Communicating

I confess that I am a huge Walt Disney World geek. The Disney parks have exerted a huge influence on me, and ever since my first visit in the eighties I have been fascinated by their commitment to storytelling, customer experience, human emotion and happiness.

Among the “classical” Walt Disney World attractions, Spaceship Earth (the iconic 18-story geodesic sphere at Epcot) has played a particularly strong role in shaping what we are doing at POSEFY. The spectacular show building houses a ride that shows guests how advancements in human communication have helped to create the future one step at a time, and I believe that POSEFY will be one of those steps.

Although the script of this ride and its narrators have evolved since its debut in 1982, I would like to share with you some of the pivotal moments in this history of human communication as narrated by Jeremy Irons.

“Like a grand and miraculous spaceship, our planet has sailed through the universe of time. And for a brief moment, we have been among its many passengers. From the very beginning, we have always sought to reach out to one another… to bridge the gaps between us… to communicate.

Across a lonely, hostile planet, our early ancestors spread out in search of food and shelter.

With the development of language came a vital key to our survival. For the first time, we could share and learn from one another. We bonded together in small tribes and prospered. No longer isolated, no longer alone.

Ages later, the Egyptians invented the first written communication - a complex language of hieroglyphic pictures and symbols. With the creation of papyrus scrolls, came the world's first piece of paper. Now, without ever leaving their palaces, pharaohs could deliver proclamations and decrees to subjects across the land.

Phoenician merchants established the earliest commercial highways trading goods and information at distant ports of call. To aid in record keeping, they created the first common alphabet and shared this new tool across the Mediterranean.

In ancient Greece, the spoken word was elevated to a fine art. Philosophers debated with one another in plazas and storytellers found a new forum for personal expression. The theater was born.

The mighty Roman empire bridged three continents with a vast system of roads; the fastest information highways the world had ever known. East, west, north, and south - all roads led to Rome. But these same roads were turned against Rome by invaders whose destruction left ages of knowledge and wisdom in the ashes that would become the Dark Ages.

But all was not lost. For far across the land, from Cairo to Córdoba, Jewish teachers and Islamic scholars continued the quest for knowledge. In libraries of wisdom, they debated ideas and shared new discoveries with all who would listen.

In western abbeys, Monks toil endlessly in lonely isolation copying ancient books of wisdom and revelations for future generations.

Finally, from the depths of the Dark Ages came the Age of Enlightenment: the Renaissance. And with this era, came a powerful new invention: the moveable type printing press. Scientists, explorers, and scholars spread their discoveries in books and essays. Poets, musicians, and artists fuelled by the passion of the age created timeless works of beauty and majesty.

On this wave of inspiration, we sailed into a bold, new era of communication bringing an explosion of tools and technologies which would bridge people around the world as never before. And as our appetite for information and knowledge grew, the world began to shrink.”

Communication has always been fundamental in moving civilization forward, and learning has been an essential part of communication since the dawn of time. Cave paintings, hieroglyphics, papyrus scrolls, the first common alphabet, the monks toiling away to record knowledge in the ancient European monasteries and the printing press have given way to the Internet; Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and hundreds of other services that continue to evolve have allowed us to share and communicate with others.

The visual experience has been decisive in the evolution of how we learn and how we communicate, and we at POSEFY are very much looking forward to assume our role in this journey with a new and more efficient way to teach, learn and communicate.

Why 3D?

The web has evolved significantly over the last 20 years. Spurred by quicker, smaller,faster and cheaper hardware, innovators around the world have brought us amazing applications that have changed the way we communicate, work, learn and play. 

However, when it comes to visualization technology, the Internet has not changed much. Sure, the implications of Moore's Law have enabled us to create, edit, consume and share high resolution content such as pictures and videos, but all the action in today's Internet continues to occur in a bidimensional playing field. 

We at POSEFY strongly believe that the future of the Internet is 3D, and the rapid adoption of innovative visualization technologies in new generation browsers points in that direction. With all its notable advances, in terms of visualization the Internet is still flat. By adding a third dimension we believe that the experience of playing games, communicating with others, shopping, advertising and everything else we currently do on the Internet will be greatly enhanced. 

Millions of people rely on the Internet on a daily basis to teach and learn how to do stuff. What is the correct way to swing a golf club? How do you stand up on a surfboard? What is the best way to do sit-ups without damaging your cervical spine? How does Cristiano Ronaldo shoot a free-kick to give the ball that wicked spin? 

Through the power of 3D visualization we at POSEFY want to empower people to teach us how to do all of these things and many, many more. In fact, we believe that the creativity of our Users will impress us time and time again, as they will undoubtedly come up with new and exciting ways to use our 3D visualization tools to communicate with others. 

We are very excited with what POSEFY can bring to the world, and hope that you can join us in bringing an end to the flat, bidimensional Internet.

We're coming soon...

POSEFY is going to be a really innovative online experience that will revolutionize the way in which people learn and teach postures online. We’re working on the finishing touches and expect to launch really soon.

Meanwhile, you can head over to http://www.posefy.com/ and sign up on our "Special People" list so that you can start playing around as soon as we're ready.