Hi I am going through the rigging tutorial in the Essential Blender. I’ve come to the part where I am tweaking the envelopes of the different bones. In stick display mode I have a toe and foot bone that show but I can’t see them in the envelope mode to tweak their envelope. I’ve checked every layer and Don’t seem to have moved them on accident. Here are too screens of what I am talking about.
bones there:
bones not:
Any help would be appreciated as I don’t know what caused the disappearing act. I’ve noticed some bones were larger in env. display. Could they possibly gotten too small to see? Thanks again for any replies in advance.
The only thing I can think of is that you might have accidentally assigned the disappearing bones to another layer (under “Display Options” the segmented strips are for bone layers) … you might have hit one of the other layers when you turned on the envelope display mode . To check this out just shift-LMB to make all the bone layers visible .
thanks for the reply. Sorry I haven’t gotten back sooner. Hadn’t had a chance to check the file again. That was the first thing I had thought of as well. Even with all layers set to visible they don’t appear in envelope mode. The weird thing for me tho is that every other display mode they are visible so I don’t know what is going on. I’ve tried to do alt+h to see if they were hidden some how. If I do draw name or draw axis I can see the names and axises for them in envelope mode. I’ve tried hiding the mesh to see if they shrunk and were in it or something but that didn’t seem the case. I really don’t understand what is going on with them.
Hummm … Well then if you want to maybe post the blend … You can use here : http://uploader.polorix.net/ for the server …
Or if you don’t want to do that, try appending the mesh and armature into a “clean” file . Start a new session with the usual cube delete it etc. and append the armature and mesh and see if it still happens in the new file … I’ve never had this problem so I don’t know what could be going on …
thanks. I’ll try that. The file is on another computer so I will have to upload it in the morning. Have to go to work now.
the appending to a new file had no positive effect. I uploaded the blend file to that site but I don’t know how I link to that file.
edit: Here is the link. Seems like there should be a better way then just copying the URL but i guess this will work.
http://uploader.polorix.net/myfiles.php
The link is still no good … Just go your files folder at polorix (the page that opens when you log in) and select your file and and RMB -> copy link and then paste that to this page . The link you have now just sends me to polorix’s log in page .
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1179/hank_for_rigging.blend
sorry my bad. I was looking for a thing like with photobucket where it gives you the exact url to copy and paste.
Somehow the tip/head radius for the missing bones have become corrupted … there is this 1.#Q0 and -1,#|Q for the respective values for the missing toes … and you can’t change it … You need to go into armature Edit Mode and bring up the Transform Properties subwindow to see the values .
The reason why it disappears in envelope view and not the others is most likely due to that fact that to visualize the bones in envelope mode you need those values to be numbers not weird symbols …
And if you ctrl-tab into Object Mode with the armature in envelope mode you will see a line trail off into infinity beginning from where the foot bone is supposed to be …
Sorry but you will just have to delete those bones and remake them … like I said you can’t manually change the symbols into numbers for some reason .
Another thing : your armature is rotated 90 degrees along the X axis (most likely you added the armature in the front view) just unparent/delete the armature modifier for the mesh and then Ctrl-A the armature in Object Mode . You should also Ctrl-N to recalculate the bone roll angles in Edit Mode with all the bones selected after you do this also . It’s a good thing that you didn’t do any animations yet because this can cause you grief sometimes …
Having the Transform Properties subwindow open when you work especially when you are rigging is always a good idea … it can help you catch silly mistakes before they become major issues .
Good Luck !
Thanks for taking a look at the file. I’m glad I was just doing a tutorial it wasn’t a major important file. In what ways is it possible that those two bones get corrupted? Are there common ways it happens that I could avoid to keep a future corruption a lower risk? Are corruptions like this common? And I have some questions about fixing the bone. Couldn’t I keep it there and do the cursor snap to selection to put the new bone in the exact same place. I believe the bones in questions are also parented to the leg controllers. Is there a way to display all the parent-child relationship heirachies in their own window so I can make sure so that I parent the new bones correctly? Or should I just delete those bones and start them from scratch to avoid any potential problems? Thanks again for your help.
I have absolutely no idea since I have never encountered this before … You can’t even try to input manually non numeric values into those fields … they just turn to 0.000 …
And no this isn’t at all common . Your file is the first that I have ever seen with this problem … You might want to submit this to the bug tracker at Blender.org and maybe a developer there can take a look at your file .
And like I said above keep the Transform Properties subwindow open when you are setting up your armature and keep an eye on the various values while you go about setting up .
The way you can display the armature hierarchy is to simply split up some screen area and open up the Outliner . There you can see all the bones and their relationships in outline form .
Yes you could use the snap option to place the new bones in their proper place . Just begin by extruding from the parent of the problematic bone then snap the cursor to the tip of the problem bone then select the tip of the newly extruded bone Shift-S -> Selection to cursor and then repeat for the toe bone (extrude snap etc but you need to extrude this one from the newly extruded bone) . Then simply select the bones with the problems and delete them from your file . This should keep your armature hierarchy intact .
If you don’t use the extrusion method you can still change the position of the new bones through the Armature Bones panel . Next to where it says “Child of” there is a drop down field containing the names all the bones that could become the parent of the new bone (if you did not extrude your bone from another bone this will be all the bones in your armature) . The little button labeled “Co” next to the drop down field indicates whether you want the bones to be connected or not .
thank you. i really appreciate all your help. Too bad I don’t know how it happened so I could try to recreate the steps to see if I could get it to happen again for the bug report. I just signed up on the bug tracking forum so I can submit the file. Does Blender have a function that grabs all the needed info from the system for the developers or do I just put that in manually? I know some projects have that feature to help with bug tracking. I’m not much of a programmer so I hopefully I could contribute in part by submitting bugs. Thanks again for your help.
Does Blender have a function that grabs all the needed info from the system for the developers or do I just put that in manually?
I don’t think so, so you might have to input your system specs yourself .