Vitruvian Bones - This is great !

[Borchc]

Sorry for my English.
I am writing to you through a translator)
I am as a rigger, immensely grateful to you for Vitruvian Bones .
I see hundreds of uses for this feature that will make life easier for all users. I have long dreamed of a similar functionality that you have implemented!
Thank you very much!

[Víctor Paredes]

Thank you very much for your message! I'm very happy you like this new feature.

[alanthebox]

Speaking of which, are there any example files of Vitruvian bones included in the library?

[Greenlaw]

I agree, Vitruvian Bones are a game changer!

It's kinda like Victor's old 'rig switch' technique but with an official UI and much easier workflow. As a matter of fact, I've been converting my old rigs that used the 'rig switch' technique to work with Vitruvian Bones instead, and it's clearly so much better this way.

[Greenlaw]

The thing to remember with Vitruvian Bones is to use Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding (Selective Flexi-bind for short) for each sub-rig. V-Bones needs this to understand the difference between each sub-rig setup. You can still use other binding methods like Point binding and Layer binding, but you also need to use Selective Flexi-bind.

[synthsin75]

The thing to remember with Vitruvian Bones is to use Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding (Selective Flexi-bind for short) for each sub-rig. V-Bones needs this to understand the difference between each sub-rig setup. You can still use other binding methods like Point binding and Layer binding, but you also need to use Selective Flexi-bind.

It's Use Selected Bones... or layer binding that Vitruvian bones uses to know which layers to hide. You can then to point binding on top of that.

[Greenlaw]

Thanks for the correction, Wes! I knew I was going get that wrong.

[SimplSam]

Whilst we are talking Vitruvian Bones / Layers - the Show/Hide Vitruvian Layers button (at the top right of the layers panel):

- Has a somewhat misleading *new* icon
- Opens/Collapses all group layers when no Vitruvian Layers exists
- Prevents manual drag/drop of layers or closing of group layers whilst it is selected

So if you are working with V.layers and leave Hide Vitruvian Layers selected, and move to another doc without V.Layers - it will prevent normal group/layer management - until Hide Vitruvian Layers is deselected. I got caught out with this and thought the app was going wacko.

[SuiRad]

Whilst we are talking Vitruvian Bones / Layers - the Show/Hide Vitruvian Layers button (at the top right of the layers panel):

- Has a somewhat misleading *new* icon
- Opens/Collapses all group layers when no Vitruvian Layers exists
- Prevents manual drag/drop of layers or closing of group layers whilst it is selected

So if you are working with V.layers and leave Hide Vitruvian Layers selected, and move to another doc without V.Layers - it will prevent normal group/layer management - until Hide Vitruvian Layers is deselected. I got caught out with this and thought the app was going wacko.

So far from what I have found you can select the V-bones option then Add selected bones to a group. The option to enable and disable the bones for editing is available by selecting a bone from the group and then toggling. The menu option is right beside the Bone strength Icon, but it doesn't have an assigned shortcut to my knowledge. The active bone from the group can be switched with smart bone actions. The keys are recorded by going to the Vitruvian (V-bone) option to make changes in the status bar.

I'll mess around with grouping and see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the report

[WargaNetLife]

can someone explain to use of Vitruvian Bones from the start?
Sorry I am a beginner who is very interested in using Vitruvian Bones. thank you

[Greenlaw]

It's like a Switch Layer but for bone rigs, or more practically speaking, for sub-rigs.

For example, lets say you have a character that has normal jointed arms, but sometimes you want the character to have wavy noodle arms you want to animate with Sketch Bones. Vitruvian Bones will let you switch between the two different arm setups in the same character.

To do this, each sub-rig needs to share a common parent or root bone. In the case of these arms, they could both parented to the upper body bone or a shoulder bone. After you bind the artwork (i.e., using Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding or Layer Binding for each sub-rig and artwork), select the Vitruvian Bones tool, select all the bones you wish to include in the Vitruvian Bones Group (minus the parent bone,) and click Group. Now one sub-rig will remain visible while the others are hidden.

Notice that the first bone of the visible sub-rig has a special mark at the base...this is important. To switch between the sub-rigs, you select the bone with the special icon in its base, and then, in the Vitruvian Bones options, select the sub-rig you want to switch to from the Active Bone menu. Vitruvian Bones will hide the selected sub-rig, and reveal the selected sub-rig. Alternatively, you can cycle through the sub-rigs by pressing Alt-D or Alt-C.

There's more to using Vitruvian Bones, but that's the basics in a nutshell.

As mentioned earlier, you need to use Selective Flexi-bind or Layer Binding for Vitruvian bones to understand which artwork it needs to hide, and you can use Point Binding on top of this binding when you need to.

[WargaNetLife]

It's like a Switch Layer but for bone rigs, or more practically speaking, for sub-rigs.

For example, lets say you have a character that has normal jointed arms, but sometimes you want the character to have wavy noodle arms you want to animate with Sketch Bones. Vitruvian Bones will let you switch between the two different arm setups in the same character.

To do this, each sub-rig needs to share a common parent or root bone. In the case of these arms, they could both parented to the upper body bone or a shoulder bone. After you bind the artwork (i.e., using Use Selected Bones For Flexi-Binding or Layer Binding for each sub-rig and artwork), select the Vitruvian Bones tool, select all the bones you wish to include in the Vitruvian Bones Group (minus the parent bone,) and click Group. Now one sub-rig will remain visible while the others are hidden.

Notice that the first bone of the visible sub-rig has a special mark at the base...this is important. To switch between the sub-rigs, you select the bone with the special icon in its base, and then, in the Vitruvian Bones options, select the sub-rig you want to switch to from the Active Bone menu. Vitruvian Bones will hide the selected sub-rig, and reveal the selected sub-rig. Alternatively, you can cycle through the sub-rigs by pressing Alt-D or Alt-C.

There's more to using Vitruvian Bones, but that's the basics in a nutshell.

As mentioned earlier, you need to use Selective Flexi-bind or Layer Binding for Vitruvian bones to understand which artwork it needs to hide, and you can use Point Binding on top of this binding when you need to.

Thank you very much sir. I have tried. I hope I can make a more complex character.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/ArksOAWSzho[/youtube]

[Greenlaw]

Oh, there's one cool thing I forgot to mention: Vitruvian Bones works with Onion Skin, so you reference the hidden sub-rig's pose to match the animation. This can be very useful in the jointed arm + wavy arm example I described.

[WargaNetLife]

Interesting. But somehow every time I use onion skins, my portview always blinks when moving one of the bones.
Is it because I use PNG assets?
But at least, I have started to understand how to apply Vitruvian Bones in my future projects.
Thanks again sir.

[Greenlaw]

Try switching on or off GPU acceleration. Depending on what you need to see, one mode may work better than the other.