Scaling of B-Bones

I’m very new to rigging and animation. I started watching a video on cgcookie about simple animation of a bouncing ball. Early on in the tutorial, he scales the bone horizontaly while in edit mode. He mentions the shortcut of alt+ctrl+s which allows him to scale it, but doesn’t affect the vertical scaling. This shortcut doesn’t work for me, and trying to use the regular scaling just changes the vertical size of the bone. If I try locking scaling to just the x and y axes, nothing happens. Has this functionality been changed since he made the tutorial? Any suggestions?

P.S. I’m running ubuntu, so some of my keyboard shortcuts may not work anyway. For example, I can’t use the keyboard shortcut to select an edge loop.

‘He mentions the shortcut of alt+ctrl+s which allows him to scale it, but doesn’t affect the vertical scaling.’
In edit armature mode, for B-Bones this affects the visual radius. For Envelopes it affects the envelope size.
Different bone types support different things.

‘This shortcut doesn’t work for me, and trying to use the regular scaling just changes the vertical size of the bone.’
If using B-Bones, you can select the head/joint of the bone, then press S.
The other way is to select the Head/joint of the bone, then move it by pressing G.

‘If I try locking scaling to just the x and y axes, nothing happens. Has this functionality been changed since he made the tutorial? Any suggestions?’
Scale locking works for normal scaling, S X or S X X (pose mode) or S Shift+X, for example.

These work for me on windows.

Were you doing all of this in edit mode? Because this kind of stuff works for me in object mode, but won’t allow me to change individual bones.

With the armature set to B-bone and you are in edit mode, select a bone then look in the Armature / Transform menu on the 3d view header. Look for ‘Scale Envelope/BBone’

Yea. All edit mode, except sxx.

I think this is what you mean.



This is what happens when I change that value… nothing


Just to be safe I changed all the other settings too, and it didn’t change the size of the box at all.

Am I misunderstanding you?

He mentions the shortcut of alt+ctrl+s which allows him to scale it,

No, the hot key for B Bone scaling is Ctrl + Alt + S, in Edit mode.

The order doesn’t make a difference. It still doesn’t work.

Yes. As I said the menu on the 3D VIEW HEADER

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If ctrl+alt+s has no effect then check your keymap, you might have changed it inadvertedly.

Hadrien

Okay, that works. Though it is labeled in a different way. Now it looks like this


. New name, same function.

I saw it before and assumed it was the same as hitting the scale “s” on my keyboard and didn’t pay much attention to the shortcut next to it. Thanks for your help!

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Just so you know, this scale has no effect on skinning or rigging, it’s only cosmetic as far as I know.

I know. It just makes it easier to grab the bone you want if they aren’t all the same width. I rebound the keyboard shortcut using the keystrokes “ctrl+alt+s” and it now says the shortcut is “ctrl+alt+window deactivate” I don’t know why… i guess it’s some other shortcut in the system, but i can scale the envelopes using control alt s now.

I know. It just makes it easier to grab the bone you want if they aren’t all the same width. I rebound the keyboard shortcut using the keystrokes “ctrl+alt+s” and it now says the shortcut is “ctrl+alt+window deactivate” I don’t know why… i guess it’s some other shortcut in the system, but i can scale the envelopes using control alt s now.

Yeah I hit that too…

alt s should work…as you said.

you can also fine tine it with the ‘s’ scale in x y and z directions. I use that all the time for the b bones