How do I manipulate all bones on a layer at once?

kaboom · Post by **kaboom** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:53 pm

I'd like to manipulate all bones on a layer at the same time. May be a basic question, sorry.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:14 pm

activate the bone layer then edit / select all
then use the bone tool you want (e.g. scale..) If you're on AS8 then not all tools will show in frame 0

kaboom · Post by **kaboom** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:33 pm

hayasidist wrote:activate the bone layer then edit / select all
then use the bone tool you want (e.g. scale..) If you're on AS8 then not all tools will show in frame 0

On my windows 97 box, I'm using AS 8 PRO.
Here's my issue in detail:

1) I select all the bones using CTRL - A
2) I choose the Manipulate Bones tool
3) I mouse click and and try to move all bones, none move.
4) I then have to physically choose one bone at a time.

What am I doing wrong?

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:24 pm

Rotate and translate bones should work.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:54 am

"manipulate" uses inverse kinematics (IK) - in broad terms that means that if you use "manipulate" to move a bone then connected bones may also be moved... in other words, for IK the way that the movement of one bone affects the movement of others is defined by the bone hierarchy.. so you can't move "all" using IK because IK defines how each bone in the chain of bones will move.

You can affect "all", as Slowtiger says, using translate and rotate - and, if you're off frame 0, then scale also becomes enabled.

The question is "what are you trying to achieve?" For example, you can move or rotate a whole skeleton by selecting JUST the "grandaddy of them all" bone and translating or rotating that -- the rest will all follow.