I’m not sure if this is a bug or if there is some way to work around this, but… Yeah. I’m working on an armature which is muscle based. A lot of stretch-to bones. :rolleyes:
Anyway, thing is, I’m now at 300, and in spite of having a wide-screen, I have run out of space. The stupid menu hits ‘rib 4_4.L rib 4_4.R’ and just continues straight offscreen, is there any way to take care of this?
I’ve never tried to create that many bones, but have you tried to hide the ones you are currently not working on, that might help reduce the list so you could see what you looking for…
Or you could try using the outliner to see all of your bones
hmm I can see how this can be a problem.
I think you should go ahead an report it as a bug. Maybe suggest that they limit the menu to the bones that are in the display layers selected.
in the meantime, you can assign parenthood by simply selecting two bones and (Ctrl+P)ing them. You get an option of having them connected or not. TO remove parent hood, Alt+P.
Also there is a little advantage in using “Ctrl+P” When you select a bone to be connect to the other bone. It moves the whole bone to that bone… including all bones that are parented to it. (This can also be a disadvantage, in that your have to parent nonconnected, and connect using menu, if you don’t want the whole bone moved, including it’s children.)
And thanks. I didn’t actually know that ctrl+p worked for bones. Yeah, I think I should report that, cause there’s a lot more to do before this rig is done. Who knows, maybe it can get worked in by the next build.
Thanks again. :]
Finally someone else using the stretch to constraints to build musculature ! I thought I was out in the wilderness alone trying to do this …
As for your problem … get a bigger display … just kidding
No I’ve come across this problem myself and found that it is advisable to split the bones into at least two seperate armature objects . One for the cotroll/animation rig for the “skeleton” and the targets for the stretch s to constraints and another “musculature” rig for the actual “muscles” i.e. the “strech to bones” . Because the contraint doesn’t care if the target is in the same armature or not (heck it doesn’t even care if it is the same object type) as long as the targets are a part of the “skeleton” and is therefore controlled by it the “musculature” rig will deform as though it was just one armature - just make sure the root of the “musculature” rig tracks the root of the “skeleton” rig so they move together . This way you’ll have less bones to deal with per rig …
But since you are at 300+ bones already I’m not sure you’d want to redo half your work … but I hardly use the pop up menu most of the time myself … I usually just type or cut and paste in the name using the transform properties window instead … I assume you are using the menu to workout parenting relationships for your target bones mostly ?
Hope to see you post this when you are finished .
Fact is, they created layers so that you can seperate bones into them “so it is easier to use and work with” in the situation where you have ALOT OF BONES. The menu should be limited to the layers you have selected to work with (logically.)
If you suggest the above it might be as easy as adding an “if” statement in the code. :yes:
ALSO, you can create a whole bunch of rigs. And join them later. (hint in 2.43 RC2, thanks to aligorith, you can now join armatures without losing constraints)
Don’t forget to mention if you do actually file a bug report.
I rarely use the “pick menu” for parenting bones since I’ve discovered the “ctr-p” / viewport mechanism. Even with an armature having only ~20 bones or so, the “ctr-p” I find much more convenient.
243.rc2 also now has search functions in the outliner which is another alternative to using the “pick lister”.
I also found another bug while confirming your “300 bone picklist problem”, if you have a parent-child level exceeding ~45 or so, the outliner doesn’t horizontally scroll, so the objects in the outliner just get cut off. I’m trying to report it to the bug tracker, but I can’t connect to it at the moment.
Also the outliner in OOPS mode only displays an “armature” block, but not the indivdual bones.
Mike
Hey, dude, I just realized you live in Toronto. I used to live in Durham Region>Oshawa, just east of there. :]
BB,
Ya, the lovely ~ -10 weather is here, great isn’t it? Where are you located now?
Btw, I saw your bug tracker entry, I suggest you add a note specifying what version of Blender and your O.S. you’re using. (I can confirm that bug exists in current CVS and 2.43rc2 on WinXP).
Mike
I’m around Niagara, a little under an hour and a half, I think. Yeah, the weather’s been pretty brutal. Hey, did you get hit by that ice storm that rolled through? Over where we were, everything was frozen solid. Icicles everywhere. Like, even the individual blades of grass were tiny icicles.
Mm, maybe I should add a note, but I registered the version under ‘CVS’ and I think it’s less of a code bug and more of an oversight. Still though, no harm in doing it, eh? I’ll mention it.
“I’m trying to report it to the bug tracker, but I can’t connect to it at the moment.” Yeah, the bug tracker is a bit of a pain to get into at times.
About the OOPS thing, I dunno if that’s a bug, cause I’m not entirely sure I’d want 328 bones sprawled across the screen whenever I opened it.
I’ve tried to fix this ages ago, but blender would keep hanging on loading files saved with the fix. I’ll look into it again sometime in the future.
Note that bones are not “data-blocks”. Only datablocks are shown in the OOPS.
Aligorith
I was wondering if it would be possible to organize bones (and other things) in folders. Just the names would be in the folders, the hierarchies would not be affected, but it might make it easier access certain things. Back in my pre-Blender days when I used Hash Animation Master they had folders to help organize huge lists of bones.
There are 16 ‘armature’ layers, specific to each armature, which can be used to group bones. These can help in grouping bones, but have the disadvantage of no names.
Aligorith
Those layers don’t carry through to the Parentship menu. It would be great if it did. :spin: