What´s the first thing you´ll ever do when making a poster/screenshot?
-Uh...I place a ragdoll?
YES!

+ 100 Social score!

But how you´ll do that?

Follow this example:


You see a foliage and male_07
Right?

As you can see
We have the plastic prop as our base for our poster/screenshot
-Why it has to be plastic prop?
Because it helps you know where you need to fufil the place within the plastic with scene building props;You can use other props to do so but i´ll recommend use the plastic one:

Tools

As you finish placing the props in your scene
You´ll came across 2 options to pose:

1. Easy animation tool
   
2. Ragdoll move / phygun

Phygun

This one its pretty much straight foward,
You choose to pose them with phygun,its not a very good way of posing since the physgun won´t give you %100 freedom to move every limb of the ragdoll;
But it has a postive being its easy to pose on ragdolls with not many bones;
Example being Half - Life 2 civilians ragdolls
That´s why we have the:

Ragdoll mover

its a simple tool that allows you move ragdolls limbs with extreme precision;
I´ll recommend you use ragdoll mover if you´re looking foward to make a:
¨%100 GOOD QUALITY POSING¨
But i´ll warn you that this process require´s alot of time and effort
Since you´ll need to manually pose every part of the body
But the outcome its aways good since it gives you a very good posing and dear to say levels near pure art! (If used correctly of course...)



You can either choose one of them or use both (which i do)

Easy animation tool

Its a pretty usefull tool that allows you use the ragdolls pre-recorded animations,its better if
You´re lazy to manually make the pose your self,
Just a simple,click in animation you´ll found interesting and click in "return to ragdoll"
BUT!
Some animations when returned to ragdoll state might break the ragdoll...
Causing it to be unmovable other then ragdoll mover;
Plus...
Not every ragdoll have pre-recorded animation + some of them are broken and can´t be used;

Let´s move to the major factor of your posing


To start up,the ragdolls have different types of bones,different phys and you´ll eventually came across a issue of some parts of the ragdoll being un-movable with the physgun and even the ragdoll mover;

Such as:

• Tails parts/wings
  
• Extra clothing such as skirt
  
• Equipement(Gun pockets and etc)

How to move those annoying lil parts of the ragdoll?
Many ways:

• Bone manipulate them manually
  
• Use the ragdoll mover "pick a bone" option (Yeah the same as bone manipulating)
  
• Use "advanced bone tool" (Basically the same from the first example)

Got that out of the way
Now what´s next?

A lil annoying part called "Posing the ragdoll"
You´ll see:

• Be expressive,make sure you posing transmit the felling/emotion;
  
• Light it up,make sure to light the ragdoll properly so it can cast shadows perfectly;

You can base your posing in already existing ones,
If you want to make that memeable JOJO´s pose,you can!
But aways remember:

• Exaggerate the posing when necessary
  
• Add a lil bit of realism when necessary

Examples:

See this?
As you can see,its a t-posing male_07
Does it transmit any sort of emotion?
No?
Yeah i really doesn´t.

What about this?
Now it really transmit something doesn´t it?
A cartoony swagger of male_07;

You can trasmit the emotion of the ragdolls in either realistic or cartoony
Both of these works pretty much the same;
But aways kept a nice balance bewteen these two
If you balance them propely you can achive a good posing

This part alot people fear and don´t undertand properly,it´s not a 6 headed beast,it´s pretty easy to undertand...It just require more attention and focus:

Example:
As you can see,male_07 its already posed but notice the flashlight
Its position
Not too far,not too close

Now let´s remove ¨mat_fullbright¨
As you can see,the flashlight its lighting the ragdoll,causing to:
"iluminates the important part,the major part of the body"
And that´s what you require all the time for your posing
"A lighting resource"
Since garry´s mod natural map lighting its trashy
So use aways use the lamp tool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyv9D7n96-o

You´ll eventually came across a issue
"The background...Do i really need to detail it enough?"
And the awnser its no...
You can save time and effort in manipulating what the camera sees:

The primary focus of this screenshot here its to show you a lil scene build:
Right?
And i don´t need to detail the background
Since what´s the point if it already served it´s purpose?

I´ve made what the camera wanted to see
I wanted to it see the lil small scene build and not this s#xy kleiner:

Catch what i´m trying to say here?
Good!
If you don´t then seach it up:
Since i am too lazy to fully explain it lmao.

This one its piece as cake
Make sure the gestures that the ragdoll makes lines with its body
SO it can transmit its emotion

Ok just use finger poser!
Nah!
Garry´s mod vanilla finger poser its limited and won´t give you %100 freedom for making gestures;
i´ll recommend you either bone manipulate the fingers manually or use ragdoll mover as it gives you more freedom to make wacky gestures;

N i c e!
I hope you enjoyed this guide
If you´re confused by some parts of it
I won´t blame you,it´s my first part doing this so expect to see some b u ll$hit here!

Also reminder that this are just some few tips in how to improve your posing,i won´t make you %100 better as it requires time and pratice

• Bone manipulate (You can bone manipulate Ragdolls the same way as NPCS)
  
  
• Advanced bone tool basically make´s bone manipulation easier and if you´re are a try-harder you can use it for posing too but it will take litearal ages to do so:
  
  
• ¨Mat_fullbright¨ its a command that removes all of the shadows of the map and iluminating every thing within it,super usefull when making posters on dark areas,make sure you bind a key to this command to make better then manually putting it on console

Here´s my screenshot galley!





https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279079869
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=104604709
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493751477
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=104576786
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=104575630
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=148090220
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531458473
(Gm_black its optional map for your posing)