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  • When Constructing Skeleton Red Parenting Lines Interfere

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Is there a way to turn off the red parenting lines when in Setup Mode and during the process of drawing out a chain of bones? If not, I think it should be an option since red lines often obscure the tip of the bone you are trying to parent the new bone to.

Thanks,
Greg Smith

Can you please show a screenshot of when the arrows are bothering you?

The arrows will disappear if you hold down ctrl (cmd on Mac), though holding ctrl is mainly for selecting an attachment. Allow arrows are drawn when there is no selection, select a bone and arrows are only drawn on hover.

FWIW, in 3.7 we recently made the arrows use dashed lines and they are a bit less distracting.

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Nate:

One workaround would be to simply make the bone icons larger (through the Settings Menu).

For me, if I am in the Bone/Create mode - (on a Mac) - and I hold down the Cmd key, the parenting lines do disappear - but, I am unable to draw the next bone while holding it down. Releasing the Cmd key allows me to finish drawing the bone - but the red Parenting lines have returned - so I don't see how this helps.

Here is what I have been seeing in the latest Mac Trial version:

Thanks,
Greg Smith

The reason this is annoying is that I cannot judge how long to make the next bone (using previously drawn bones as a reference).

Also, I hate red markings and annotations - in general - and find them needless and distracting. If I need to see Parenting connections - there should be a simple toggle to allow me to do so - and, in Preferences it would be nice to change them to thinner lines of a less glaring color than red.

Thanks,

Greg Smith

I agree, we should do something to improve this.

While it doesn't address arrows getting in the way, for your particular use case you may be better off drawing a single, long bone, then using Split in the bone properties. This is the fastest way to make bones that are perfectly aligned origin to tip of previous bone.

Another way to do the same is click once with the Create tool for each bone you want (doesn't matter where), then switch to a transform tool (eg Rotate) so you can multi select bones. Select all your new bones and type the length in the bone properties under the tree. Next, ensure Parent is selected for axes in the main toolbar, then type the number you entered for the bone length into the textbox nearest the Translate tool button (the X textbox) and zero for the adjacent textbox (the Y textbox).

Of course if you want bones of different lengths or otherwise want to eyeball it, you're back to arrows getting in the way. We'll improve it soon.

Just a few quick tips for the time being.

  1. It's looking like you're working on skeletons at a scale that makes it such that the bones look tiny enough that they get obscured by the arrows.

If you go to the Spine Settings (F12) Under "Graphics", you can find a slider for "Bone Scale". You can crank that up until the bones look just right for the scale you're working at. Try scale 2 or 3.

I believe that will make your bones quite visible for your use case of getting a good look at the length of previous bones.

  1. All the red arrows are only visible when you have the Create Tool N selected, AND you have no bones selected.
    So you can temporarily switch to one of the other tools, like V for Translate, to hide the arrows. Then back to N when you want to create new bones again.
    Likewise, you can select any bone, normally the parent bone of your next bone, and it won't show all the red arrows.

I can agree that it's sort of unnecessary for it to show the red arrows while holding down the mouse button while creating the new bone.
Showing the red arrows on hover is helpful though.

Nate & Pharan:

I'm glad you are considering improving the Bone creation visuals. Spine is at such a stage that such criticisms really fall into the category of "nit-picking", certainly.

I really like the shortcut of drawing one large bone and then subdividing it into many bones using the "Split" command - though - to nitpick that as well - it would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut for simply holding down that key and clicking on a bone to enter "subdivision" mode - followed by dragging to the right to divide the bone into smaller and smaller bones.

Hah!

I don't know about you guys - but long time computer artists such as myself have become overly sensitized to very bright colors - red, in particular. At my age, it's just too much for me. A more subdued purplish color would still stand out without rattling the senses.

Thanks,

Greg Smith