Can I parent a bone to 2 other bones?

[synthsin75]

My best guess at what you want would be to have 2 sets of clavicle bones. One to be controlled by the head and a child to be animated.

[ZV1LLE]

I'm not sure if I need to have 2 sets, is it possible to just reduce the strength or filter the rotation so that the arm bone only goes up when the clavicle bone is rotating with the head?

[synthsin75]

And I'm right back to not knowing what you're trying to do.

[ZV1LLE]

I'm sorry I'm being heavily vague again. It's like moving your head to the side and lifting up your shoulder, that's what I'm trying to replicate with my rig.

I'm not sure how else to describe without visuals, so I hope your able to understand what I'm trying to achieve

[synthsin75]

Why doesn't the clavicle bones being angle controlled by the head bone work for that?

[teienkawi]

I'm sorry I'm being heavily vague again. It's like moving your head to the side and lifting up your shoulder, that's what I'm trying to replicate with my rig.

I'm not sure how else to describe without visuals, so I hope your able to understand what I'm trying to achieve

im not sure this will turn out exactly like you want but you could try parenting the clavicles to the head bone and make the clavicles both independent angle then parent the arm bones to the clavicles. so when the head leans the shoulders(clavicles) will raise/lower the arms without rotating them

[ZV1LLE]

I could try that and see if it works, Thanks!

[ZV1LLE]

It didn't work. I also tried adding an independent angle to the upper arm bone, which got me what I needed! but I wasn't able to move that arm bone anymore.

Any other suggestions? I'll probably post a demonstration of what I'm trying to achieve later

[ZV1LLE]

So here's a demonstration of what I've got so far:

This is what I have:


And this is what I'm trying to achieve. This is also the result I got by making the top arm bone have an independent angle (but I wasn't able to move the top arm bone when I enabled this):


Anything else I could try? And is it actually possible to make smart actions with bones? (e.g, moving the arm bone up when the heard turns left or right in the smart action)

[Maestral]

Usually...

Parented bones are linked in a continuous "chain", snapped to each other's ends.
Why are the shoulders in your rig dislocated?

The head bone should be parented to the spine, just as those 2 clavicle bones.
Why don't you use Control Bones/Angle to have clavicle bones react to the head movement?

It seems to me, what you're trying to achieve with those independent angle arm bones is to mimic gravity, as in a pendulum. I'm afraid that would be more of an obstacle than a solution.

[Greenlaw]

I'm still unsure why you want to set it up that way. Normally, I would want the clavicle bones to be animated separately. In animation, I might sometimes keyframe them in sync with the head movement, but the head doesn't drive the clavicle bones. Linking the clavicle bones to the head severely limits how the character is animated, and it doesn't really save much time and effort over keyframing them separately to move in sync.

But if you really need a single control to animate these three bones, here's another suggestion:

Add a bone above the upper torso bone with its origin in the same location as the head's origin. Now, parent the clavicle bones and the head bone to it. This bone gives you a handle to rotate the two clavicle bones and the head bone together, and you can still rotate the individual bones when you need to.

Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

What Maestral wrote about simulating the effect of gravity got me thinking:

If that's what you're doing, Independent Angle does simulate this well, but it's an all-or-nothing option because you can't keyframe Independent Angle. When I need this option to be keyframeable, I like to use target bones instead, which are keyframeable.* To use it this way, insert an 'offset' bone within the joints and point this bone to an uparented target bone located below the ground level. The target will hold the rotation of the 'offset' bone kinda like how Independent Angle would, and allow you to animate the limb bone above it. (To do this correctly, you also need the target bone to follow the X position of the 'offset' bone, but that's getting more complicated. Moving the target far away from the character might be good enough, especially if they mainly stand in place and only walk a short distance.)

This is probably way too complicated for what you need, but it's another approach that can be considered.

(*More commonly, I'll just make a second version of the rig, one with Independent Angle and one without, and switch between them as necessary. I would only make a more complicated setup if I find myself switching between the rigs multiple times within the same scene, and I have multiple scenes like that to animate. I don't think this situation has ever actually come up for me, though.)

[ZV1LLE]

I'm not really sure which option I should pick nor am I understanding them quite well . Will a smart action involving the bone do the trick? All I need for the head looking up or down, is the upper arm bone rising up along with it, to prevent something like this:


temporarily disabled my clavicula bones to replicate this btw

[Greenlaw]

If the action is something the character does frequently, it could be set up in a Smart Bone Action. Just be sure to turn it off when you're not using it, otherwise the Smart Bone may prevent you from animating the bones manually when you need to.

Personally, for complicated motions that I want to reuse, I prefer to apply that as a regular Action. To me, it should be easy enough to select the bones and insert the Action's keys as needed without having to worry about a potential Smart Bone conflict.

But, again, unless I'm misunderstanding the purpose of this setup, the motion doesn't seem like it needs a special setup. Is there are reason the bones can't be animated directly? If the character only makes the gesture once or twice, it might not be worth the extra work. Even if it's sometime that's repeated often, you could just copy and paste the keys.

[ZV1LLE]

Yeah, but I think an action could the trick. The head looking up or down is something that when it happens, I don't want to have to deal with any problems or fix stuff during animation

Am I able to use the transform bone tool in the head bone action to move it up with the head?