Manipulate bones and Add bones are greyed out

[Francis Seven]

Howdy, all. I finished rigging my character with flexi binding and added an action to the arm bending to correct it when it bends.

First, it worked fine. But now something's gone wrong. I can't access "Manipulate Bone" anymore and even though I'm in the bone layer, "add bone" it also greyed out. And the smart bone I have selected is highlighted boldly. If I select it again, I get a blue-ish grey highlight on top of the bold highlight.

Does anyone know what's going on?

[Francis Seven]

It looks like it's happening only while the smart bone action is highlighted in the actions window. Hm.

[funksmaname]

was the action created while the parent bone layer was selected? if you were in a child layer when creating the action it won't have been created for any parents - go to the parent and try to re-create an action with the same name... if that is the problem this should fix it

otherwise, please provide more info

[synthsin75]

If a smart bone is bolded then you are editing a smart bone action. When editing an action, you can't add bones and you have to use the transform bone tool instead of the manipulate tool (as this tool use to allow inadvertently keyframing all bones in the IK bone chain).

[Francis Seven]

Thanks, yeah I guess I was editing an action and not knowing it. I also only learned today that I could only move a bone around (as opposed to rotate it) if I weren't on frame zero!

[synthsin75]

On frames other than zero, the manipulate bone tool will only translate root bones (those without parents). Just use the transform bone tool to rotate them (or I think there's a modifier to force the manipulation bone tool to do so, check the status bar for tool modifiers).