Auto-dim bones not in current hierarchy
When working on a complicated rig, it's often easy to get distracted by all the bones that are visible when in edit mode.
Currently, one can manage this complexity by moving the selected bones to a new bone layer and display only that layer, but this is a cumbersome workflow.
It would save a lot of time and be very handy to be able to automatically dim bones that aren't in the immediate hierarchy of the selected bone. This way users could see the other bones as reference, but not be as distracted by them.
3 Comments
So how would this work? For auto-hide names and axis on bones you could have a toggle button for the display to only show on selected, or furthering your topic, only show on selected and bone chain.
I have been using layers and do wish I could name them and lay them out better. I'm not sure how Blender would know the immediate hierarchy of the selected bone besides parent/child relationships. I think instead that it could be linked to bone layers and only show the bones in that layer? By only show I mean that it would dim the other bone layers.
I also think it would be beneficial to be able to see bone shapes in edit mode and have a toggle.
What are you thoughts?
I'd love to be able to see bone shapes in edit mode! that'd be great. :)
As for handling layers, I find that I try and stay pretty strict about my layers & what they're used for. For example, I have all my deformation nodes in a single layer, so I can get to them easily and see what's deforming my object.
If I want to work on one chain of those layers (say, my hand) having to move that to a separate layer in order to simplify my view is a bit cumbersome. Instead, I'd rather see the relevant info for the thing I have selected. So - the selected bone chain, for example.
One option would be to walk up the chain until it reached either the top of the hierarchy, or a branching point, and then go down the chain until the end.
additionally, it would be great to add the ability to auto-hide names and axis on bones you weren't focused on.