Bones behind bones

[slowtiger]

I do a fair amount of very minimalist animation, icons and infographics. In this I often have to deal with characters seen strictly from the side, which means hip and shoulder joints of both sides are at the exact same position on the screen, and so are the bones of arms and legs. (This is one of the few remaining cases for Bone offset tool.) This makes it hard to grab the correct bone (front or back, or character's left and right) for animation. In the past I often fiddled for minutes to get the right one!

Tip:
Just create an additional bone in front and back (which means besides) of your character, and let this one control the real arm/leg bone. I make it a habit to let the front bone control the front limb , and the back (behind the character) bone the back limb. Easy to remember, and faster to select than any list of bone names.

[Greenlaw]

Good tips slowtiger!

My tip here doesn't help with bone selection but I like using bone colors to designate left/right/center bones. It makes it easier for me to identify the bones when they cross over.

For Bone selection, the drop down list helps but only if the user is diligent about naming bones (which I do as I create them.)

Another option for quick and easy bone and bones 'set' selection is to use Stan's Bone Selection Buttons. I like using this tool to select the tail bones in a character for Sketch Bones animation when they cross over other bones in the rig.