parent bone layers?

[Gnaws]

I'm trying to clean up this bone mess I made. When I try to move the leg it's almost impossible to isolate it unless I make everything else a shy bone, and then unshy and repeat for every other bone. I found that if I have sub-bone layers I can isolate just that bone group (yay!) but I lose all bone hierarchy.

I hope this is something simple to fix that I'm just overlooking.

Thanks in advance.

[hayasidist]

You can use different bone colours for different parts of the rig. And there's a script written by Lukas that allows you to toggle the visibility of bones by colour (can't find the link to that right now -- maybe someone else can chime in?).

IOW make (say) the bones that control front arm red and those for the back arm green etc etc and switch off everything except red when you want to animate the front arm...

[Víctor Paredes]

I set the same shorcut for 'Hide selected bones' and 'Show all bones'. That way I can hide and show bones quickly without having to modify the 'Shy' property (which I prefere to give to bones I'll never need to animate).

The shortcut works this way:
- if a bone is selected, it hides it
- if no bone is selected, it shows all bones

Now, maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like you have too many bones there. Is there any reason for it?

[MrMiracle77]

You could consider controlling some limbs/parts via target bones. You make a point bone, set the limb bone to 'target' it, and wherever you move the point bone the limb will follow.

[Gnaws]

I set the same shorcut for 'Hide selected bones' and 'Show all bones'. That way I can hide and show bones quickly without having to modify the 'Shy' property (which I prefere to give to bones I'll never need to animate).

The shortcut works this way:
- if a bone is selected, it hides it
- if no bone is selected, it shows all bones

Now, maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like you have too many bones there. Is there any reason for it?

Hi Victor - this is the way I've always rigged. I know it's probably a hot mess, but it's worked for me in the past. This character is smaller than most, so the bones appear to be a jumbled bone salad.

Hiding/unhiding bones requires tedious selection either with the shortcut or using the menu counterpart. Thank you tho for taking the time to respond.

[Gnaws]

You could consider controlling some limbs/parts via target bones. You make a point bone, set the limb bone to 'target' it, and wherever you move the point bone the limb will follow.

That sounds pretty clever. I'll definitely give that a try. Thank you for the reply.

[Gnaws]

You can use different bone colours for different parts of the rig. And there's a script written by Lukas that allows you to toggle the visibility of bones by colour (can't find the link to that right now -- maybe someone else can chime in?).

IOW make (say) the bones that control front arm red and those for the back arm green etc etc and switch off everything except red when you want to animate the front arm...

THAT sounds like a sweet solution. I'll have to hunt for that script. Thank you.

[hayasidist]

And there's a script written by Lukas that allows you to toggle the visibility of bones by colour (can't find the link to that right now ...

found it … viewtopic.php?f=5&t=19689&p=186407#p186422