bones in sublayers ... how to view/move as one global layer

[WillA]

I started a character with one bone layer at the top.
This worked very nicely.
I then started break down the character into bone sublayers.
I did this to get more control over how bones effect image and
vector layers.
Now its much more cumbersome to animate because I cant
see all the bones at once. Also there is no bone locking
accross bone layers. The parent heirarchy transformation bone to bone sub layers is working fine.
What I was hoping for is the same kind of quick interactive flow
that I was getting when the bones were all in one layer.
Any ideas?

[Lost Marble]

One of the features addedin version 5 was bone offsets - this feature was specifically meant to address this issue. It lets you put things in one bone layer that used to go into multiple layers. You get separation of the different bone structures with the cohesiveness of having them all in one layer.

Take a look at Tutorial 3.4 for an example of using bone offsets.

[WillA]

thanks for the reply ...
Im confused ... the user docs that I have
shows section 3.4 only has one bone layer
I have a layer structure that looks like

bone layer top
vector layer
bone layer sub1
image layer
vector layer
bone layer sub2
image layer
vector layer

...etc

I was wanting to see all the bones at once ...
currently when I make "bone layer sub2" the current layer I see the bones from "bone layer top" but I cannot select or manipulate them.
Also when I lock bones in "bone layer sub2"
and then make "bone layer top" the current layer ... the bones from all
other layers dissappear. Also the lock is ignored between "bone layer top"
and "bone layer sub2"

[/img]

[WillA]

sorry the structure did not show properly

bone layer top
-->vector layer
-->bone layer sub1
----->image layer
----->vector layer
-->bone layer sub2
----->image layer
----->vector layer
----->bone layer sub3
--------->vector layer

...etc

[7feet]

The whole point of using the bone offset is so you can have all of your parts in just one bone layer. Or at least mostly. When you create the different sections of your character with all the parts separated, the affect of the bones on other parts is minimized or eliminated. Even when you start animating and the bones look like they are all connected, in some way Moho still acts as if they are far away from each other. If the pieces, before the bone offset, are far enough apart that, say, as far as the bone strength is concerned wouldn't affect each other, they never will. It can take a little bit to get used to rigging you're characters all "exploded" like that, but it does end up lending a lot more control when you are animating, as all of the bones are available at once. I've had a few characters where I had to zoom out pretty far because there were parts all over the place. As much of a pain as it is, you might be better off going backwards a little bit. Put all of your Vector and Image layers into one Bone layer, all nicely separated to take care of any unwanted interactions, and just re-rig the sucker. No fun, but it's worse being stuck with something you think is really difficult to animate.

And if I got confusing there, I'll give it another shot.