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[johnar]

 Nice vid Raxx
 I see now that neirao was more describing 'the way bones are drawn', which i have seen in other animation programs. Click, drag and rotate new bone in 1 movement.
 Yes, definately an easier/faster way to create a rig.
 As far as  'moving the bones apart, and

the ability to also animate the movement and scale of bones

, is something i'm not really getting my head around so easily.
 But, you guys know what you're talking about, so i'll just keep following this thread and comment as things become clearer. 
 .....great to see discussions beginning re anim8or rigging and animation.....
 Exciting stuff...

[davdud101]

+1
I like the info happening in this thread. It's really cool to me...
I particularly like the idea of animatable scale/length to bones, although I'm not a 'heavyweight' animator yet.

[Steve]

Give Build 1170 a try!

You can rotate and scale bones when adding them, plus you don't need to specifically select a bone before adding a child bone.  For existing bones, I haven't finished allowing both scale and/or rotate simultaneously but they also are easier to select. Note: for the quicker selection you need Fast Select enabled.

[Raxx]

Awesome! Works spectacular! I know a lot of people will be happy with this. I know I am

However, things go weird after adding about 30 bones in a chain. If you add bones to preceding bones afterwards, it adds them to different bones than the ones you want, and doesn't follow the mouse.

Figure I'd bring it up here, but is there any way we can get X-Ray wireframe bones option for flat/shaded views? Basically, the bones are rendered always on top in their wireframe form, making them really easy to see and work with. Guess I'll mention alternate bone forms like cubic and lines would be spectacular improvements as well. Probably deserves to be in a different topic

[Steve]

The 30 levels of bone issue is a limit of the transformation depth supported by OpenGL (that's a minimum - it can be higher). I can work around it (and plan to, some day) but it requires quite a lot of changes to the code so I've rather work on features first.

I should add a restriction in Anim8or so that you can't do this. Strange things start happening when you build a skeleton deeper that 30 levels and start adding objects to some of the interior bones.

[Raxx]

Ah, alright. So if I made a chain of 29 bones, and make another chain of bones off of bone 25, I can make only 4 more bones without it messing up. Similarly if I made another chain from bone 1, I can make 28 more on the new chain without it failing. It was easy reaching the 30 bone limit just clicking around to try out the new functionality...there probably won't be that many instances of needing more, but the more ambitious projects I can see this limit being hit easily (like a monster snake...the head'll be at the end of all the bones along its body, and require more bones for a detailed facial rig). The ability to rig and animate the movement/offset of bones could spell more efficiency in the rigging process and reduce the need for more.

[davdud101]

Can't wait to try the new build, Steve!
-----
It's beautiful! Well done, Steve! I don't think I'll be needing more than 30 bones in one figure, but I did check out that "bug" just to see what happened.

[Steve]

It's not a limit of 30 bones in total - it's the depth that you can nest them. A snake with > 30 bones all in a row would hit the limit but an octopus with 10 bones on each arm wouldn't.

Anim8or has always had this limit so it's nothing new.

[nemyax]

In new bone mode, once you release the mouse button, the endpoint of the new bone is frozen, and you have to switch tools to keep adjusting it. Is that the way it's meant to work?

[neirao]

woow Steve,
i see the link for download the  Build 1170 only now.
i try very nice add new bones, is Amazing!

Thanks for share!

[neirao]

Steve,
forgot to say... 
in "Sequence Mode" the rotations of bones no work when i use the views: FRONT,LEFT,RIGHT,BACK
in anothers views work... is a bug?

PS: is amazing the new way for figure mode    do you remember my old idea (years ago) for made "FREE ALL BONES button"?
      so i think the is more useful if all bones "start free" for all rotations sides (time saved for made the animations)
      and when  someone no want this,  made static manually, lock this bone.. what you and guys think about??? 

[Raxx]

      so i think the is more useful if all bones "start free" for all rotations sides (time saved for made the animations)
      and when  someone no want this,  made static manually, lock this bone.. what you and guys think about??? 

Actually, I thought about this as well when I tested the latest build. I feel the bones should definitely start with no joint limits. It'll make for a much more freeing experience.

[Steve]

In new bone mode, once you release the mouse button, the endpoint of the new bone is frozen, and you have to switch tools to keep adjusting it. Is that the way it's meant to work?

nemyax: In Add Bone mode each click-drag on a bone adds child bone to that bone. You can rotate and scale the bones as they are being added but once you release the mouse click-dragging again will add another bone. It wouldn't be possible to do this if Anim8or allowed you to scale or rotate the bone that you just added.

You can always use the 'R' hot-key to switch to Bone-Rotate to adjust the new bone's angle, and then the 'N' hot-key to switch back to Add Bone.

[nemyax]

Steve
Do you think it could be possible to extend "new bone" mode to allow dragging of any bone's start/end point, not just the newest bone's end point? Because that's what we do when we build skeletons—we arrange joints (and let the program derive the bones). This behaviour could be enabled by holding down a modifier key.

[neirao]

      so i think the is more useful if all bones "start free" for all rotations sides (time saved for made the animations)
      and when  someone no want this,  made static manually, lock this bone.. what you and guys think about??? 

Actually, I thought about this as well when I tested the latest build. I feel the bones should definitely start with no joint limits. It'll make for a much more freeing experience.

yes Raxx,
i think that if in "menu>bone editor> bones paramentes" has the button "[reset]" that clear all paraments(must use a loop/matrix for select the bones) no is so hard to start free all bones! and too create a new button [free all] [lock all] etc.