Bone Manager Extended - Testing

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
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Hello everyone. I made this add-on starting from the celebre ‘Bone Manager’ by Fin and Irmitya. I also reused parts of code of the add-on ‘IK/FK Snapping’ by Mystfit (links at the end of the post).

The add-on is able to generate a UI script for your characters that will work also in a blender installation without the add-on.
For the part regarding the actual bone layer management please refer to the original documentation, here I will try to explain only what is new respect to the original.

Only tested in 3.2 and 3.3, probably not working in previous versions.
It is distributed for free with GNU license, you can download it from here:

What’s New?

  • Main Layers / Tweak Layers
    The layers will be divided in two different section. From 0 to 15 they will be in the MAIN section, where the others will go to the TWEAK.
    The script also provide two operators: one to make visible all the used layers, the other to hide all and keep visible only the layers from selected bones.

    F_layer_set_result
    F_layer_set_result700×767 149 KB

  • Link Secondary Rig
    This is useful if you have one or more secondary rig for the character and you don’t want to join it in the main rig. The linked rig(s) will act exactly like it was a regular bone layer. You can also choose where to place it, in main layers or tweak layers.
    F_secondary rig

  • Customized User Properties
    In this section the user can create “folders” to group and store custom property from the bones.
    These properties will be always visible in the UI, regardless of witch bones are selected.

    F_user_prop
    F_user_prop700×811 66.3 KB

  • FK / IK Snapping Operator Creation
    This section will create snapping buttons for FK and IK, there is also an auto-detection toll that will try to find eligible chains.
    This function probably need to be improved to better match the uses-case. It surely works well with rigify rigs.
    Please let me know how it works with your rigs!
    Note: the baking option is very slow, if you know how to improve it please let me know!
    Fikfk

  • Bind the Script to the Rig
    Next to the Export button there is a Bind button. This will charge the script in the Blender space, bind the script to the rig, run it and unbind old scripts generated by this add-on. So you click export, then bind, and the character is ready to be linked!

    secondary_rig_setup
    secondary_rig_setup331×595 34.8 KB

Thanks to:

6 Likes
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Won’t install on Blender 3.4.1. I go to Install and direct it to the Bone-Manager-Extended-main.zip but nothing shows up in the addon window. Nothing to “check”

Is it not compatible with 3.4.1?

And I tried installing bone_manager_102.zip and it shows up but when I try to place the “check” in the box I get this error message;

2023-03-15_09-03-19
2023-03-15_09-03-19995×827 65.3 KB

I am starting the Pierrick Picault course in rigging and would like to use this recommended addon.

Thanks for any help.

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This addon is awesome!!!

A few features it could use

1- Instead of splitting the Main\Tweak layers half and half like that, let us tag each layer as a Tweak or Main layer instead. We rarely need so many tweak layers, and rigify meta-rigs distribute the IK/FK/Tweak layers per limb on consecutive layers. This will allow us to organize the bones in layers as we see fit while still enjoying the Main/Tweak layer split you implemented.

2- The Ik/Fk snapping feature is awesome! Do you think you could tweak it to support chains that are longer than 3? The rigify default snap one seems to work well for chains of 4, so maybe the code could be referenced?