--- VIDEO DEMONSTRATION COMING SOON ---
Ever applied a pose and watched your character teleport clear across the
scene, hip and all?
Or spent ten minutes getting every finger just right around a prop, only for
a pose pack to "helpfully" reset the whole hand along with everything else?
Or nailed the perfect expression, applied one more pose, and found your
character suddenly, blankly neutral again?
No more. PoseGuard hands you back control over what a pose is allowed to
touch - and how firmly. Click the body regions and tags you want to keep,
click Enable, apply your preset: everything else poses normally, and what you
protected stands its ground. Ask nicely (Light mode restores your values the
instant a preset tries to touch them) or lock the door outright (Full mode
bolts them shut so nothing gets through, preset or your own stray click) -
PoseGuard covers both.
KEY FEATURES -----
- A Body Diagram, Not A List
Pick what to protect directly on a clickable figure silhouette - head, neck,
torso, pelvis, each arm, hand, leg and foot - plus six tags for Expression,
Upper Body, Lower Body, Root Position (Global), Hip Position (Global) and Hip
Position (Partial). No files to edit, no configuration.
- Two Protection Modes: Light and Full
Light watches what you protected and restores it the moment a preset
overwrites it - your own manual edits (a slider you dragged, a gizmo you
moved) are respected and simply become the new reference. Full goes further:
it puts a native Daz Studio lock on every protected property, so nothing -
preset or manual edit - can move it at all while Guard is enabled.
- Full Expression Coverage, Automatically
"Expression" is not a curated handful of sliders. In Full mode, PoseGuard
asks Daz Studio itself which properties belong to the selected figure's
facial system - every native expression morph and every third-party
expression pack you have installed, across all four generations, discovered
on the fly rather than read from a fixed list. Install a new expression pack
tomorrow and PoseGuard locks it today, no update required.
- Root Position, Solved Properly
Moving "the whole character" in the viewport and rotating the hip bone are
two different things in Daz Studio, on two different nodes. PoseGuard gives
you both, as separate tags: "Root Position (Global)" pins the figure node
itself, so a preset can never recentre your character; "Hip Position" pins
the root bone, in a Global or Partial variant (Partial leaves horizontal
placement free - made for seated and lying poses).
- Head And Neck, Independently
The body diagram treats the head and the neck as two separate clickable
zones, so you can protect a facial pose while still allowing a neck
adjustment, or the reverse.
- Four Generations, Validated Against Real Rigs
Genesis 3, Genesis 8, Genesis 8.1 and Genesis 9. Every property name in every
region and tag was verified against a real figure export, generation by
generation - not guessed from naming conventions. The right generation is
detected automatically from the selected figure.
- Works With Multiple Characters
Select another character while Guard is running and PoseGuard re-applies the
same protection choices to that figure and re-arms on it. Select a bone of
the character already being guarded and nothing changes - you can inspect and
work normally.
- Custom Presets
Build your own protection group by picking properties directly from the
figure's real rig, with a searchable, checkable tree. Custom presets are
saved as individual files in a folder you choose, so you can keep them in a
cloud folder or share them across machines. Each one is locked to the
generation it was built on and clearly badged as such.
- Always Obvious When It Is Running
A protected property that "does not move" looks like a bug if you forgot
Guard was on. PoseGuard makes the state impossible to miss: the whole panel
border pulses amber while Guard is enabled, and the button and status line
say so plainly.
- Clean Undo
In Light mode, restorations are folded into the undo entry of the action
that triggered them - applying a preset with Guard enabled is still a single
Ctrl+Z.
- Honest Feedback
Clear in-panel banners for every situation: no figure selected, an
unrecognised rig, nothing to protect, some properties missing on this
particular figure, Guard auto-disabled because the scene was reloaded.
- Native Look & Feel
Styled to match Daz Studio's own panels - dockable, floatable and resizable
like any built-in pane.
HOW IT BEHAVES --
- In Light mode, manual edits are respected: if you change a protected
property yourself while Guard is enabled, PoseGuard adopts that new value as
the reference instead of fighting you.
- In Full mode, protected properties are natively locked - Daz Studio itself
refuses to change them, by preset or by hand, until you disable Guard.
- Guard disables itself automatically when a scene is loaded or cleared, and
tells you it did.
- Guard arms on the figure you have selected. Selecting any part of it - a
bone, a hand - is enough; PoseGuard resolves the owning figure for you.
WHO IT'S FOR -----
Any Daz Studio artist who poses from presets and refines by hand: character
artists building expressions, anyone posing hands around props, comic and
sequential-art creators reusing a pose library across panels, and anyone tired
of redoing the same corrections after every preset click.
REQUIREMENTS -----
- Daz Studio 4 or Daz Studio 6
- Windows 64-bit
- Genesis 3, Genesis 8, Genesis 8.1 or Genesis 9 figures
KNOWN LIMITATION (DAZ STUDIO 4) --------
On Daz Studio 4, saving a scene while Full mode is enabled writes the native
locks into the scene file (the .duf will show those properties as locked when
reopened). This is a Daz Studio 4 SDK limitation, not a PoseGuard bug - it
does not happen on Daz Studio 6. It is also easy to undo: if you reopen a
scene and find stray locks left over from this, just select the same regions
and tags again (or everything, to be safe), click "Enable Guard" in FUll mode and then
"Disable Guard" - PoseGuard clears every lock in that selection,
including the ones baked into the file.
FAQ -
Q: Does PoseGuard block the pose preset from loading?
A: In Light mode, no - the preset loads completely and normally, and
PoseGuard restores your protected values right after. In Full mode, the
protected properties are locked, so Daz Studio itself skips them while
loading the preset.
Q: Will it reset my figure to a default pose?
A: Never. In Light mode, PoseGuard only ever writes back values it captured
from your figure at the moment you enabled Guard.
Q: Can I use a custom preset made on Genesis 8 with a Genesis 9 figure?
A: No, and this is deliberate. The facial system is genuinely different from
one generation to the next, not just renamed - silently remapping a custom
preset across generations would produce wrong results. Custom presets stay
visible but greyed out, with a badge showing which generation they belong
to.
Q: My character is Genesis 8 Male / Female - do I need a different version?
A: No. Male and female share the same skeleton and the same property names;
one preset set covers both.
Q: Does it work with animation?
A: PoseGuard protects properties at the current frame. It is built for posing
workflows rather than timeline animation.
CHANGELOG -------
1.0.0 - 2026-07-31
- Initial public version of the plugin.
- Clickable body diagram (head, neck, torso, pelvis, arms, hands, legs, feet)
plus six tags: Expression, Upper Body, Lower Body, Root Position (Global),
Hip Position (Global), Hip Position (Partial).
- Two protection modes: Light (snapshot/restore, respects manual edits) and
Full (native property lock).
- Full mode's Expression coverage is discovered dynamically from the figure's
own rig - native and third-party expression morphs alike, on all four
generations.
- Custom preset builder with a configurable storage folder.
- Automatic generation detection and multi-character re-arming.
- Daz Studio 4 and Daz Studio 6 in a single package.
