Moving layers with bones

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Jkoseattle
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Moving layers with bones

Post by Jkoseattle »

I have a figure all rigged up and ready to go. But at one point the layers that make up the figure have to move independently of what the bones permit. I tried simply moving the layers to where I need them like regular untethered layers, but the presence of the bones makes that very impractical.

Bones make it easy to move a character in predictable ways, but how do you do it when a rigged character needs to temporarily beak the bonds of its rig?
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synthsin75
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Re: Moving layers with bones

Post by synthsin75 »

I believe Hayasidist and/or DKWroot have scripts to bake bone influence to point motion. That could probably be used on a duplicate to free the layers of the bone influence, and then switch back to the rig when needed.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Moving layers with bones

Post by Greenlaw »

Alternatively, you can bind the items that need to move independently to their own bones. Then, bind these bones to the rig's bones. This way, you can un-parent the child bones at the key moment and animate the items separately from the rest of the rig. (Bone parenting is a keyframeable property.)

If that doesn't work for you, you can make a duplicate of the items, move the duplicate out of the rig, and hide the duplicates by keyframing Visibility. Then, at the key moment, hide the original items in the rig and reveal the duplicates. Now you can animate the duplicates independently of the rig.

Yet another approach it to make a reference of the entire character rig. Hide the items in the original, and in the reference hide everything else but keep the items visible. Then, a the key moment, kill all the keyframes after that moment in the referenced rig. Now you're free to animate the items independently of the original rig.

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