Collections for bones.
I think that now that the collections are in an advanced state at the object level, it is time to transfer the concept to the layers and groups of bones.
Although there are still reluctance, I think that most users are happy with the final integration of the collections and the advantages are unbeatable. Armatures continues to use the old system of organization, for this reason I think it would be more consistent to unify everything.
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This makes total sense. If you didn't rig a character, you'd have to constantly check through the layers until you memorised which one contained which bones.
The only thing I'd query is if there would still be an option to mark a layer as protected in the Properties Panel, or would you need to go through the Outliner and uncheck selectable? Or both?
This is now in development!
#108941 - Animation: Replacing bone layers + groups with bone collections - blender - Blender Projects
i disagree. Collections make sens for objects. Bones are not objects and they already have a hierarchical order. A more powerful way is to extend bone groups feature with some toggle options :
and make them react as the layers. (behave as immediate button.) This options could be boolean. For example, the "not visible" option allow to contradict other visible groups. e.g : in the group "legs", we have the ...legs and we setup "Right" group and "Left" group. then if we click visible for legs and not visible for Right, we will see the left leg.
A other addition could be automatic groups. By automatic, i mean implicit. e.g. the deform checkbox in the bone Properties can be sync with a predefine deform group. This way, we can select the deform bones with one click.
* @jerome tailhades * Hmmm, how does hierarchy fit in here? It shouldn't be affected by visibility. The ability to name your collections or layers makes things a lot more intuitive for people down the pipeline.
The immediate action is nice, but if it's something that needs to be lost for a more intuitive approach, I'd say it's worth it.
* @etufo2 * Collections help to organize a scene and make things hierarchical (collection in other collection, etc.) This is helpful because we now have names and some toggle options to handle the contents. Nice ! We can see collections as a form of parenting.
Bones have a hierarchical organization who doesn't fit collections design. How do you deal with bones when we change parent relations ? Is a bone change automatically from one collection to another? If so, why have collections if the user does not have the hand. If not, what a mess!
And what about constraints (which can be a form of parenting)?
* @jerome tailhades * I'm gonna concede here. I think I am misinterpreting the proposal and the proposer isn't clarifying. Collections are for visual organization not control hierarchy. You can still have parent and children in different Collections and it does not break any constraints in any forms - it's purely visual. However, Bones are to Armatures what Object Data is to a Mesh and they cannot be separated.
I'm just looking at this as a way to visualize what's in the Bone Layers and still maintain the current functionality where any Bone can exist in any Layer and it only controls visibility not constraints and parenting.
I'll go vote up the duplicate because it's a bit more fleshed out even though it's not getting much attention.
Duplicate of this proposal .