04. Bone use

Bones may be selected either through the timeline or through the screen.

1. Selecting bones using the screen

Bones are displayed on the screen as the marks depicted below. Left click them with the mouse to select them.

When a bone is selected, the marker becomes red.

By holding ctrl while clicking bones, you can select multiple bones at once.

Bone marker

2. Selecting bones using the timeline

You can select bones by clicking on the bone name coloumn on the timeline.

When selected, the bone's name turns red.

If you hold the Shift or Ctrl keys while selecting bones, you can select multiple bones at once.

If you click on a group of bones, all bones in the group will be selected.

When moving or rotating bones, it is possible to use either the Bone Handle or the Axis Controller.

Bone Handle

When you select a bone, a handle designed to help rotate or move bones will appear.

The green handle rotates the bone around itself from your point of view.

The red handle rotates the bone around around the X axis from your point of view.

The blue handle rotates the bone around the Y axis from your point of view.

The center handle moves bones capable of movement and rotates the bone around its center if not.

Axis Controller

By left clicking and dragging the mouse over the Axis Controller's buttons(located on the 3D view), you can move and rotate

bones relative to different axes.

Dragging upwards is plus, dragging down is minus.

Additionally, you can relocate the position of the Axis Controller in the Settings menu's Editor submenu.

Above the bone controller, there is a button for switching between Local and Global modes.

This button allows you to specify the type of axis to use when controlling a bone.

Local control

When in "local" mode, a bone is moved/rotated such that the direction of the bone's child bone(see glossary) is designated as the Y axis.

In other words, when you drag the Y axis rotation icon, the bone will rotate such that the direction of its child bone is the Y axis.

Global control

When in Global mode, regardless of the structure of the bone, the Y axis direction is judged as perpendicular to the

global X/Z axis(the global "ground"), and so is constant.

In other words, when you drag the Y axis rotation icon, the bone will always use the global Y axis direction("up") as its axis.

You can recognize the different axes by the following color rule: X is red, Y is green, Z is blue.

You can adjust the movement or rotation between keyframes using a Bezier curve.

You can control the Bezier curve by dragging the two square points on the chart.

The top right represents the selected keyframe(the end), and the bottom left represents the keyframe directly before it(the start).

In the animation the two frames create, the line is a visual representation of the progression of rotation angle for rotation, position

on the axis for the various types of movement, and transformation for morphs.

Bone motions can be layered.

By creating multiple bone layers, you can merge different motions.

To create or delete a motion layer, right click a bone's name on the timeline and select the "Add motion layer" or "Delete motion layer" option.

Bone layers are by default named by a 3 digit number, but it is possible to change this.

Right click, select "Change name," and enter a name of your choice.

When you want to reverse paste the state of a bone onto its opposite bone, use the Bone Reversal function. This function can be used on any currently selected bone. To use it, while selecting a bone press the Bone Reversal button located on the Bone tab.

In detail, this function searches for a bone's opposite based on its name. A bone's opposite is judged by whether it has an R or L at the start of

its name. If an opposite is found, it pastes the motion reflected across the Y axis.

If the selected bone has neither R nor L at the start of its name, the motion is pasted onto the selected bone itself reversed across the Y axis.

If you press the "Selected unregistered bones" button on the Bone tab, all bones with unregistered movement/rotation will be selected.

You can multiply the position bone, or the strength of a morph, by a number. This is useful in situations such as when customizing a motion for one model for another. Select the keyframe you want to multiply, select "Multiply pos/angle", and then insert your desired values into the dialogue that appears.

By default, cut or copied keyframes are pasted back to the bone they were originated from. However, it is possible to paste these keyframes to other bones. After cutting or copying a frame, select the bone you want to paste to, and select "Paste to other bone" under the Bone tab.

Select "Center bias" from the Bone tab, and enter desired numbers into the dialogue that pops up.