Posing With Constraints

Use the viewport handles to guide the parts of the pose that matter. Each active constraint describes an intended position or orientation, and AutoPose adapts the rest of the body around it.

Starting And Finishing A Session

Switch the panel to AutoPose and press Start AutoPose. The handles appear and the viewport is now listening to you.

Press Esc, or the same button again (now reading Finish AutoPose), to end the session. Finishing keeps the current pose on your rig’s own FK controllers. Nothing is lost by leaving, and nothing has to be committed first.

A running session

the handles AutoPose can be directed with, drawn over the character.

How AutoPose Thinks

A constraint is a guide for one joint. “Bring this wrist toward here.” “Turn this foot toward this orientation.” AutoPose considers every active guide and produces the body pose that satisfies them best while staying close to the pose that was visible when the current drag began.

Each drag starts from the visible pose

Set Base only saves a checkpoint for Restore and deactivates the constraints. You do not need to press it before continuing. AutoPose automatically uses the pose on screen at the start of each drag.

Three things follow from that, and they explain most of what you will see:

Untouched joints are free

Anything you have not constrained is allowed to move. That is what lets one drag change the whole body.

Active constraints keep applying

A constraint you placed earlier still guides every later solve. It does not stop mattering after the drag ends, but it can shift when the pose has competing instructions.

Fewer is usually better

Each active constraint reduces how freely AutoPose can adapt the remaining body. Use only the constraints that define the pose; three or four is often enough.

The constraints are soft rather than exact locks. When constraints conflict, the control you are currently dragging takes priority and the other active targets may move enough to make the pose work.

Up to 16 active constraints

AutoPose supports a maximum of 16 active constraints at a time. This is a limit, not a target. A smaller active set gives AutoPose more freedom to produce a natural full-body response, so deactivate constraints after they have done their job.

One drag, whole-body response

the wrist being pulled across the viewport while arm, shoulder, and spine settle around it.

The Constraint Types

Every handle can be one of these. The type decides what the handle is telling AutoPose. The swatches show the default viewport colours, which you can change in Preferences.

Type	Colour	What it controls	Where you can use it
Position		Guide this joint toward a point	Any joint
Rotation		Guide this joint toward an orientation	Any joint
Look At		Orient this part of the body toward a target	Hips, chest, and head
World		Move the whole character in the scene	The character as a whole

Switch a handle between Position and Rotation by holding Alt and clicking it, or with the two buttons at the top of the panel when it is selected. Switching type does not move the pose.

Position, rotation, and look-at

Alt-clicking to switch a handle's type, then aiming the head with its look-at target.

Look At

The hips, chest, and head each carry an extra Look At target on top of their normal handle. Drag the target to orient that part of the body toward a point in the scene.

Look-at is complementary rather than exclusive: a joint can have a position or rotation constraint and a look-at at the same time, and the two are manipulated independently. It is the natural tool for eyeline, for turning the chest into or away from an action, and for keeping the head engaged with something in the scene while the body does its own thing.

World

The world control is the large light-blue ring around the character’s feet. Drag it to move the armature object in the scene without changing the pose.

World is not part of the solve

The world control does not condition the solve, so it cannot be activated or deactivated the way the others can. It moves the character; it does not tell AutoPose anything about the pose.

Working With Handles

Reading The Colours

Each state and type has its own colour, and all of them are yours to change under Preferences → Viewport Controls.

A resting control is slightly transparent. Hovering makes it brighter and shows a small card with the joint name, constraint type, current state, and the shortcut available at that moment. Active constraints have an extra ring around the handle.

Colour role	Means
Position	A position constraint
Rotation	A rotation constraint
Look At	A look-at target
World	The character world control
Frozen	This handle is locked against editing
Hover accent	The pointer is over this handle
Active accent	This handle is the one being manipulated

Selecting And Dragging

Do this	To get this
LMB drag on a handle	Move a position handle, or manipulate the active rotation or look-at handle
LMB click on a handle	Select and activate it, then show its gizmo
Shift + LMB	Add another position handle to the selection group
G with a handle selected	Switch it to Position and begin moving it
R with a handle selected	Switch it to Rotation and begin rotating it

Position handles can be moved as a selected group; rotation and look-at handles are manipulated one at a time. All handle transforms support Blender’s familiar controls: type a number, press X, Y, or Z to constrain an axis, hold Shift for a fine adjustment, or right-click to cancel.

Undo And Redo

Ctrl + Z undoes the last AutoPose drag or constraint change. Ctrl + Shift + Z redoes it.

While a drag is still in progress, press RMB to cancel it and return to the pose from before that drag. Restore is different: it returns to the checkpoint saved with Set Base.

Deactivating, Freezing, Hiding

Three different ways to get a handle out of your way, for three different reasons.

Deactivate

RMB on an active handle deactivates it. The constraint stops conditioning the solve, and the pose does not move when you do it.

Use it when a constraint has done its job and you want the joint free again for the next drag.

You can also do it from the panel with the Deactivate button, or clear every constraint at once with Clear.

Freeze

Alt + F freezes the handle under the pointer, and again to unfreeze it. Freezing prevents selection or editing without changing whether the constraint is active. An active constraint continues guiding the solve while frozen; an inactive constraint remains inactive.

Freezing protects the handle from input. It does not turn a soft constraint into an exact lock, so the target can still shift slightly when the solve has competing instructions.

Hide

RMB on a handle that is already inactive hides it. Hiding is purely visual: it takes the handle off the screen and has no effect on the solve.

Use it when a dense area, usually around the spine or a shoulder, has more handles than you can comfortably click through.

Alt + H brings every hidden AutoPose handle back. It only ever affects AutoPose’s own handles, never your rig’s hidden bones or objects.

Freezing, deactivating, and hiding

a placed hand frozen, a constraint deactivated with RMB, hidden, and brought back with Alt+H.

The Constraints Panel

The panel mirrors what the viewport is doing, and adds the bulk operations that are awkward to do by hand.

The Constraints panel

the type buttons, the state buttons, and the active count in the header.

Control	What it does
Active count	How many constraints are currently conditioning the solve, up to the maximum of 16
?	Opens the shortcut list, using your own bindings
AutoPose / Manual Pose	Switches between the two posing modes
Position / Rotation	Sets the type of the selected handle
Activate / Deactivate	Turns the selected constraint on or off without moving the pose
Freeze / Unfreeze	Locks or unlocks the selected handle
Mesh-aware Occlusion	Dims handles that sit behind the character’s mesh

What Mesh-aware Occlusion is for

With it on, handles on the far side of the body are occluded by the character mesh so depth is easier to read. Turn it off if the visibility is not useful for the current mesh or view.

The Constraint Manager

Expand Constraint Manager for the full list, grouped into Leg R, Leg L, Arm R, Arm L, and Spine. Every joint AutoPose knows about is in here, with its look-at target listed beneath it where one exists.

Use the controls in each body section as follows:

Control	Effect
Section arrow	Expands or collapses that body section without changing any constraint state
Section count	Shows how many constraints are active in that body section
Section eye	Shows or hides every handle in the section; visibility does not affect the solve
Section lock	Freezes or unfreezes every visible handle in the section without changing which constraints are active
Section X	Deactivates every active constraint in the section without changing the current pose
Constraint row	Selects that handle in the viewport; Look At controls have their own rows where available
Row eye	Shows or hides only that handle
Row lock	Freezes or unfreezes only that handle

The buttons beside the full list apply the same visibility and freeze actions to all handles, rather than one body section.

Constraint Manager

the body sections with their constraints and per-row visibility toggles.

Manual Pose

Sometimes a pose needs something AutoPose is not for: a finger curl, a facial control, or one bone nudged by two degrees. Press Shift + R, or use the Manual Pose button, and the handles step aside so you can work on the rig directly in Blender’s own Pose Mode.

While you are in Manual Pose, the panel says so plainly and offers one large button back. Nothing is solving, and every normal Blender tool behaves the way it always does.

Press Shift + R again, or Return to AutoPose, to bring the handles back. Your manual edit stays visible and becomes the starting pose for the next drag. It does not replace the saved Restore checkpoint.

Manual Pose and back

a detail fixed with the rig's own controls, then AutoPose resumed with the edit kept.

Next

• Foot Contact & Ground to keep the character standing on something.
• Poses & Animation to key, record, and move poses around.
• Shortcuts for the complete list of keys.