Can't delete actions, even if they don't have fake users.

Artistic Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi everyone!

I’ve appended some actions from a rig in a file to a different rig from another file. The rigs have many bones in common (basically most of a default rigify biped), so the animations work for the identical bones.

The problem is that I can’t delete the new actions. They don’t have a fake user, yet, when selecting one in the action editor, it already indicates having 2 users, which prevents me from deleting it by re-opening the file (at which point orphan data gets discarded). I’ve removed the unused channels (the ones underlined with red in the graph editor), so the actions should be “clean”.

I tried using the delete orphans addon (which usually does the trick for stubbornly stuck images, in my workflow), but it didn’t do anything here.

Also, switching the outliner to display orphan data doesn’t list the actions in question, only the ones I didn’t append (to which I’ve assigned fake users - indicated by the green check-mark).

So, obviously, there’s another user of those actions, apart from the main rig (as far as Blender’s concerned). Does anybody know how I can find the second user of the actions?

I’m sorry I can’t post the file here, as it’s work related and I’m not allowed to do so.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

2

Try making it a single user and then try deleting both of them, one at a time.

3

Have you tried shift-clicking the ‘X’ next to the action name field in the action editor?

Have you tried typing the name of the action into the search box at the bottom of the outliner to find the users of the action?

That’s all I got, until I could see the file…

Randy

4

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

@stilltrying - the problem was I couldn’t make it a single user, since I couldn’t find one of the users.

@revolt_randy - the “x” only unlinks the action from the current slot, but that still leaves it assigned to that second “invisible” user.

Anyway, I figured it out - the actions’ second users were nla strips. I didn’t create those, but it seems Blender 2.74 automatically stashed the actions as inactive nla strips when switching actions (at least it did in my case). I guess it’s a way to prevent the loss of actions when closing Blender or opening a different file, without assigning a fake user to those actions (which has happened to me in the past, while still figuring out Blender’s animation system).

Thanks and happy blending!

5

Randy - searching the outliner helped me find one stray connection that I couldn’t locate despite all manual search efforts… What a relief. Thanks for the tip.

6

This worked for me (shift-clicking an action after deactivating the shield icon in 2.80, which used to be ‘F’).

Also, if you RENAME ANY Shape key drivers, those drivers will do NOTHING inside Blender or anything else; You need to delete them and re-key them before export, or Unity (or whatever) will not find them.