How to use offset bone

[mystd]

I've been using it to change a bones position since it also moves the layer but even when on frame 0 it snaps back to it's old position when I use the transform points tool on the layer that is bound to the bone. Is offset bone pure for animation later on or why does it behave like this?

[slowtiger]

The Offset bone tool is only for constructing a character in frame 0.

[Greenlaw]

Offset Bone is a legacy tool and mostly unnecessary these days. (Although I still occasionally use it for special situations.)

Offset Bone is a rigging tool and the idea is that it lets rig a part of a character away from the main skeleton to minimize the influence of the main skeleton's bones. In the past (before version 9 I think,) this was a useful technique because ASP binding methods were much simpler and limited.

Nowadays, we have Flexi-binding which can be set to bind selected layers to a specific selection of bones, so there's really no need to use Offset Bone anymore.

Where I have used Offset Bone recently was to move a character's extra long tail setup away from its complicated armor setup which also had many bones, because having all the bones in one location got visually confusing during setup. Offset Bones allowed me to move the tail off to the side of the character and rig it there, and then it snapped the tail back into place when I was ready to animate.

There are a few gotchas to using Offset Bone that come when changing the rig. Sorry, I can't recall exactly what those issues are at the moment, but I do know that if I had to do this again I'd probably just manually position the tail bones at frame 1 and create an action for re-positioning it, just in case that key gets deleted in the template file. This should avoid those issues with Offset Bone (that I can't think of right now. Groan...need coffee.)

(At times like this, I wish we had a way to create Bones Selection Sets so we could easily show and hid them. Kinda like the current Shy system but with more control over what to show and hide.)

[mtbuck24]

(At times like this, I wish we had a way to create Bones Selection Sets so we could easily show and hid them. Kinda like the current Shy system but with more control over what to show and hide.)

I totally know what you mean! I made this request to Victor a while back and think he might have misunderstood me

I said the following: (note this was before the announcement of Moho 12)

Hey Victor, do you know how you can create a points group and select those and create a channel for those certain points?

Do you know if you can do the same for bones, create a bone group and select and create a channel hide/show those selected bones? (this is pretty much the new 'show layer on timeline' feature in Moho Pro 12)

For example say I have a ton of bones in my rig and I have a super hero with a cape. To select just the cape bones and have that channel visible I have to select the cape bones hide/shy bone than select all the bones and hide all selected bones than go to bones > show shy bones. I was thinking if there was a way you can create a bone group you can select and have visible just those bones, which would make animation a ton easier.

Victors Response: people have asked about that for long (especially Heyvern, do you know him? He used thousands of bones!), I will try to push that feature in the future

So that's really cool!

[funksmaname]

DKWROOT put out a tool set which included a rotate bone tool mod that lets you only work rotate a bone of certain colour (so if there are multiple coloured bones overlapping you don't have trouble moving the right one)
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=28816

I wonder if that script could be changed/adapted to work on the select bone tool so dragging only grabs bones of a certain colour?

Might be worth asking in that thread.

Bone and shape groups would be a nice addition.

Vern made a bone groups script here too : viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22797
Not sure if it works in 12...