[Bf-funboard] Empties in the bone hierarchy

[Roger]

Phong
Thank you
You have explained and extended upon what I tried to open for discussion a 
couple of weeks ago, I did not know  the correct terminology not the greater 
application that you have described.
Maya apparently also has something that automatically applies an armature/bone 
set to a mesh and parents it simultaneously.
Thanks again
Roger
<snip>
> A good example of this is 3DS Max's Character Studio Bipeds.  I personally
> really like Bipeds BUT try working with more then a handful of them in a
> scene and keeping track of the hundreds if not thousands of bones all named
> Bip something or other gets old real fast.  It would be so much better if
> say the creators of Character Studio decided to "encapsulate" all the bones
> belonging to a single biped in to a, I don't know, an ARMATURE?

<snip>
  But everything you
> needed was available anyway because the system makes one realize that a
> collection of 4 points and their spacial relationships is all you need to
> create the end of a logical "bone" and, by using these collection of "bone
> tips", it's possible to create a fully functioning rig with no problems.  As
> a matter of fact, not having "bones" frees one up to use tricks like
> including the points making up the end of one "bone" in to the rigging of
> other logical "bones" for secondary motion or even including those points in
> completely "unrelated" parts of the "bone hierarchy" so the motion of a
> single "bone" can move many different parts all at once.  

<snip>
> As a quick side note, let me add that what would really speed up rigging in
> Blender isn't empties but an auto-rigging script.