Why is the Add Bone tool not available?

[egypturnash]

So I am following through the tutorial manual. Drew a nice tree and some hills. But now I've imported Frank, made a bone layer for him, dragged his art layer into the bone layer, and selected the bone layer. But the Add Bone tool isn't showing up in my toolbar at all. What am I doing wrong?



In general I feel like there is something about the way Modo selects points, objects, and layers that I'm not getting; I'm coming from twenty years of Illustrator where I've been using the Direct Selection tool for a huge amount of my selecting, whether it be points or objects. If anyone's written a "Welcome To Modo, This Is How Being An Illustrator Expert Will Trip You Up Until You Learn These Things" kind of post on these forums I'd love a link, all I can find is discussion of importing stuff from AI.

[egypturnash]

If I load in a file where I'm fooling around with drawing a thing, and add a bone layer to it, the bone tool does at least appear, but clicking and dragging with it does nothing.



edit: oh wait I got that to work at least, I had Show Curves off and it turns out bones get hidden/revealed along with those. *makes a note of that*

[synthsin75]

You generally want to create assets on frame zero, but if you really need to create them on other frames, you can disable: Edit>Preferences>Tools>Enable drawing tools only on frame 0
I leave this disabled, but many people accidentally create assets on other frames, which can be a pain to fix at times.

[egypturnash]

I am indeed creating the art on frame zero... oh but I'd accidentally hit space to start the playback when trying to zoom in with Illustrator's keyboard shortcuts and there's Frank sitting on frame 33. Turn on Show Curves, drag out a bone, there it is. Thanks! <3

[egypturnash]

also you have answered my vexing question of "why do the drawing tools keep vanishing", too, so double thanks