Armatured character moves when edit

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi,

Further to my recent upgrade of Blender, i’ve got this character i did on Blender 2.45. He’s a robot with arms and legs, and a simple armature.

Having upgraded to Blender 2.46 now whenever i go into Edit mode on the ‘skin’ of the character the whole mesh jumps backwards by about the height of the character. Also if i edit the cap i get a similar sort of thing (he’s got a little cap).

No other problem is obvious though. The mesh is ok when it jumps back, it just looks a bit weird. And as soon as i go back out of Edit mode then the mesh jumps ‘back’ into the position it was originally.

Obviusly this character has bones so I don’t know maybe the fact that i moved the character using one of the ‘Bones’ to kind of ‘drag’ the character has messed up the positioning, but i thought this was how you were supposed to use bones.

Also i got a few other objects on the scene without bones and they don’t move when i go into Edit mode.

I notice the ‘X-Y-Z axis’ markers and the ‘center’ of my character is roughly where the character ‘jumps’ to when i go into Edi modet. I tried to fix this by doing Object > Transform > Centre New from the menu …but this doesn’t move the axis.

The other objects which behave normally when i edit have their X-Y-Z axis on the same position as the object itself.

I guess this might explain why my character ‘jumps’ out of position but i am still a little confused.

Maybe just a hangover of all the different versions of Blender i’ve been using to create this character?

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Pablo.

2

… whenever i go into Edit mode on the ‘skin’ of the character the whole mesh jumps backwards by about the height of the character. Also if i edit the cap i get a similar sort of thing (he’s got a little cap).

No other problem is obvious though. The mesh is ok when it jumps back, it just looks a bit weird. And as soon as i go back out of Edit mode then the mesh jumps ‘back’ into the position it was originally.

I’m no expert, but I don’t think that a problem was introduced in any given version. When you go into Edit-mode, the mesh is drawn in its “base position,” free of all of the various influences that might otherwise act upon it. When you leave that mode, the actor (so to speak…) “goes back in-character.” This is done on purpose: when you need to “tweak something,” you’re always looking at the same thing; when you’re moving the character around, he’s “strikin’ a pose.”

Obviously this character has bones so I don’t know maybe the fact that i moved the character using one of the ‘Bones’ to kind of ‘drag’ the character has messed up the positioning, but i thought this was how you were supposed to use bones. […] Also i got a few other objects on the scene without bones and they don’t move when i go into Edit mode. […]

Bones, and the associated vertex-groups and weights (and other things) have a direct effect upon the mesh (duh…), and undoubtedly these are the influences that cause the jumps. Armatures, of course, are adjusted in a separate set of modes, e.g. “Pose Mode.” In Edit mode, the armature’s influence is zeroed. Leave Edit mode, and it resumes. [/list]

I notice the ‘X-Y-Z axis’ markers and the ‘center’ of my character is roughly where the character ‘jumps’ to when i go into Edi modet. I tried to fix this by doing Object > Transform > Centre New from the menu …but this doesn’t move the axis. […]
The other objects which behave normally when i edit have their X-Y-Z axis on the same position as the object itself. […] I guess this might explain why my character ‘jumps’ out of position but i am still a little confused.

Your observations are correct, but no, they’re not an “explanation.” They are, instead, a consequence. The “center of” a mesh (or any other object) can be anywhere in space. Customarily it is close to “the center of” the object (and Center New attempts to calculate such a position for you), but the “center point” of any object is simply “a point in space.”

The reason why the other objects are not “moving around” is that they don’t have an armature associated with them or influencing them. Your mesh is “striking a pose” when you hop out of Edit-mode, but the other objects don’t.

Maybe just a hangover of all the different versions of Blender i’ve been using to create this character?

Yes, different versions of Blender do behave differently in some ways, and other folks here might disagree with me, but I don’t think that you “have encountered a bug” (or one that was fixed) in this case. I’d welcome to be corrected on this.

3

Select your character, hit F7, and in the “object and links” panel, make sure the “par:” field doesn’t have the name of your armature in it.

Then, select the armature, go into Pose Mode, make all relevant bone layers visible, select all, and hit Alt+GKey, to clear the locations of all bones.

If those steps don’t fix it, we might need a .blend file to help you troubleshoot.