Hiding bones??

[striker2311]

Hello everyone,
I wanted to ask if there's a way to hide a bone using smart bone dial or something like that (apart from shy bones and Toggle colour bone (lukas script))??

[Greenlaw]

Keyframable Bone visibility is something we've been asking for for a long time. If you need to animate the visibility of bone sets, Lukas' LK_ToggleColorBones script is still the best way to do this.

Vitruvian bones addressed many of the reasons I needed keyframeable bone visibility. For example, it completely replaces Victor's old 'rig switch' technique which relied on moving sub-rigs off- and on-camera.

But yes, I still occasionally wish I was able to keyframe bone visibility inside a Smart Bone Action.

Here's an idea: If you don't want to use Lukas' script, you might be able to cheat it with Vitruvian Bones...

1. Select Vitruvian bones and create a group for the bones you wish to hide and then create a group with only a single bone.
2. Now Shy or Hide that single bone.
3. You can now create a Smart Bone Dial that switches between first bone group and the 'empty' bone group, in effect 'hiding' the first group using the SBD.

I just tried this technique and it works fine. The only limitation I can see is that the bones to hide need to be somehow parented to the group's root. But if you're creative with your bones hierarchy, this should work fine for many situations.

[striker2311]

Keyframable Bone visibility is something we've been asking for for a long time. If you need to animate the visibility of bone sets, Lukas' LK_ToggleColorBones script is still the best way to do this.

Vitruvian bones addressed many of the reasons I needed keyframeable bone visibility. For example, it completely replaces Victor's old 'rig switch' technique which relied on moving sub-rigs off- and on-camera.

But yes, I still occasionally wish I was able to keyframe bone visibility inside a Smart Bone Action.

Here's an idea I just had: If you don't want to use Lukas' script, you might be able to cheat it with Vitruvian Bones...

1. Select Vitruvian bones and create a group for the bones you wish to hide and then create a group with only a single bone.
2. Now Shy or Hide that single bone.
3. You can now create a Smart Bone Dial that switches between first bone group and the 'empty' bones group, in effect 'hiding' the first group using the SBD.

I just tried this technique and it works fine. The only limitation I can see is that the bones to hide need to be somehow parented to parented to the group's root. But if you're creative with your bone hierarchy, this should work fine for many situations.

This is great idea, Greenlaw really, actually I've been trying to hide pin bones but creating simply vitruvian bones were also not working on them, but now that you had mentioned I might just have parent them with another bone to get them hidden or shown.
Thanks for this idea, Greenlaw, you're a lifesaver...

[Greenlaw]

In case anybody needs an example, this is the test project I did this morning...



Download: hideBonesTest.moho