[Bf-funboard] Empties in the bone hierarchy

[Jason van Gumster]

Hello,

"David Bryant" <aceone at bellsouth.net> wrote:

>  This is a feature that I would even write a patch for myself ( I
> probably will ) unless Joshua Leung is interested in doing it
> himself. At this stage in Blender's features, in order to use empties
> as rig handles in pose mode you have to use a bone and have the bone
> drawn as the empty.Why not just enable the empty to be able to be
> used without the bone to object (empty) drawing mechanizm and if
> necessary make empties have the ability to become a part of the bone
> (or rig's parent / child hierarchy) in pose mode.It's less code
> overhead and would make rigging much more powerful and simpler.

IIRC, historically this wasn't done because non-bones could not be
mixed in actions with bones; rendering the Action Editor nearly useless
if you've rigged with empties. However, with the new animation system
in 2.5, I'm 75% fairly certain that this won't be a problem... though
it may still be better to use bones, especially if quaternion rotations
are only available there (of course, that part is pure speculation on my
part. Someone smarter than me will have to confirm ;).

  -Fweeb