What I am trying to do:
I have two identical rigs. I want to be able to pose each of the rigs and have that copied to the other rig.
Is that even possible?
I have already tried grouping… but it doesn’t seem linked posing is possible with that.
Bone constraints work, but only in one direction. I can pose the original rig, and have that copied to the duplicate… but there is no way to do the reverse.
You can copy animation from rig1 to rig2:
Select rig1 (not animated), then SHIFT select rig2 (in object mode). CTR-L gives you the MakeLink menu. Choose ‘Animation Data’.
Now both rigs share the same animation data, which is what you might not want. Press U (Make Single User) and choose ‘Object Animation’. Now the two rigs’ animation data can be edited independently.
If you just want to copy over a pose from rig1 to rig2 and rig1 has a pose library, select rig2, enter pose mode and click on the icon next to the Pose Library title (in the Armature Data tab). This gives you a choice of the available Libs. Choose the according one.
Thank you for your response.
I guess I must be doing something wrong, because that doesn’t seem to do anything.
I selected rig1, shift-selected rig2, both in object mode. Both turn a nice bright shade of green. I linked the Animation Data, via CTRL-L.
What should happen now that they share the animation data? When I pose one rig, the other doesn’t change at all. Do the rigs have to be in a special format? Sharing names for the rig, for the bones? Hm… this is a lot deeper into Blender that I have been before.
Copying poses would work, I guess… but I would like to pose both rigs in realtime. So that falls flat.
And another problem I stumbled over: I need the second rig to be mirrored. With a lot of fiddeling, I managed to get that working with bone constraints. But that means I still can pose only the original.
I guess this was just another of my completely crazy ideas that I cannot get to work in the way I imagined.
Another method:
Change DopeSheet to ActionEditor: select rig2 and select the rig1’s “ActionToBeLinked”-button in order to select its Action.
Now rig 1 and rig 2 have the same animation data.
If this doesn’t work, the bones in the two Armatures might not have same names…?