switching target bones on/off?

[peter wassink]

is it possible to animate target bones on/off in the timeline.
This is a function i would need a lot, but i did not come across a method to do it ....in any tutorial so far.

So if not... what would be a good way to achieve similar effect putting the target bone in a switch layer?
(i'm not sure how to do that)

[peter wassink]

How would you solve this:
a character rests his hand against a wall, you need a smartbone to keep it steady, then he continuous elsewhere, now the smartbone is in the way.

[Greenlaw]

is it possible to animate target bones on/off in the timeline.

Sure, I use this all the time.

At most basic, just change the target setting in the Constraint window, and that will create the keyframe.

An even better way is to switch to the Parent tool, Alt-Left click the targeting bone to select it, Ctrl-left click on no bone to untarget. Ctrl-left click the target bone to retarget, or another target bone to change target. A keyrame is created for any of these actions.

[peter wassink]

thanx d.r.

and in relation to this is it possible to hook up characters to each other?

say one character stands on the shoulders of another....how do you attach the feet target bones of the top character to the shoulders of the bottom character.

i had the idea i'd have to maybe put the bones of both characters all in one layer,
which i thought to achieve by putting both characters in one bone group but it appears this is not sufficient...

obviously i'm too novice to come up with a clever solution... any tips?

[Greenlaw]

Not directly because all the bones will need to be in the same layer for them to see a single target bone. However, there are ways to work around this.

I did an animation a while back where characters held hands, and I think I simply duplicated the hand target bone from one character to the other. This only works accurately if the bone layer itself isn't transformed differently for each character. Otherwise, I just 'eyeballed' the position of the target for each character.

Another time, I actually broke out the arms of each character into their own rig layer, since that was the only parts of the characters that had to interact. Then I just carefully positioned the shoulder bones to follow the respective bodies.

I suppose you could parent a 'dot' or 'cross-hair' image to the target bone, render the animation, and then use the tracker to track the target bone for each character rig. I've never done that myself but it should work. Actually, that would help for just 'eyeballing' the target position too.

[peter wassink]

on the facebook Moho page Alexander Wilhelm gave me this solution:

Put the top one with its bone layer into the others bone-layer, then you can bind this bone layer to any bone of the other. so the whole character would be linked to a bone of the bottom one. this could be also a new one, that you can use, to position your top-char.

and it works!
you need to use layerbinding.
it is a bit cumbersome to navigate through my layers , i have actually 4 characters on top of each other... so they are all nested in my layerpanel...
but it sure beats manual frame by frame placing

[Greenlaw]

That sounds super useful but I don't understand how nesting allows bones in the upper bone layers to target a bone at the lower bone layer. When I nest bone layers, the upper layers don't see target bones in nested layers.

Or are you talking about an alternative to targeting? Can you explain further or post an example?

Thanks in advance!

[peter wassink]

hi
yes, its not actual targeting, but a workaround where you let an extra bone on the bottom character control the nested bonegroup of the top character.
its not as flexible as having target bones in the bottomcharacter would be, but as a workaround it worked.