It is now possible to colour code bones to help identify them as members of different functional groups. By doing so, animators can spend less time focusing on finding the controls, and more time on crafting the performance. This is done by assigning bones to Bone Groups, which use one of the colour sets for bones defined for the active theme.

To enable custom bone colours, the 'Colors' toggle (located in the 'Armature' panel in the Editing Buttons, beside the 'Shapes' toggle) must be turned on. By default, this is disabled.

Bone Groups

Bone Groups allow bones to be grouped into functional groups which may be temporary or permanent. As a way of visualising this, all the bones in a group can be displayed using one of the 20 colour sets for bones in the current theme, or the group's custom colour set. However, it is worth taking note that a bone can only belong to one group at a time.

When inserting keyframes for bones assigned to a Bone Group, the corresponding Action Channels will be assigned to a matching Action-Channel Group (see [Action Editor Changes] for details).

In Pose Mode, the Ctrl-G hotkey can be used to present a menu with options for managing groups, and grouping bones. When at least one bone is selected, there are options to assign/remove the selected bone(s) from various groups. There are also options to add/remove groups from the armature's set of bone groups.

Additionally, Bone Groups can be edited from the Editing Buttons. When in Pose Mode for the selected armature, there are buttons for editing Bone Groups on the right hand side of the 'Links and Materials' panel. From there, groups can be added, removed, and also renamed. The name of the Bone Group shown is the active Bone Group.

Below these settings, there are some more settings which control the colour set used by the Bone Group to colour its bones with. The colour set (including the default colours, 20 colour sets defined in the theme, and the custom colour set for that group) can be chosen from the menu. There are also buttons to preview/edit the settings of the colour set (if not using the default set). Editing one of these will result in the group's custom colour set being used (with the colours + settings from the active set being copied across).

Bone Colour Sets

Per theme, there are 20 sets of Bone Colours. These can only be accessed from the Info Window -> Themes buttons, under "Bone Color Sets". A set of default colour sets has been defined for convenience. They've been chosen with the same colour-coding principles in mind, so they should compliment each other quite well.

For each set of Bone Colours, there are 3 colours that need to be defined. These are used to represent the various states of the bones, and have been named accordingly.

• Normal - This colour (darkened slightly) is used for the wireframes of unselected bones. It is also the colour used for the 'solid faces' of the bone.
• Selected - This colour is used for the wireframes of selected bones only.
• Active - This colour is only used for the wireframes of the active bone.

There is also another setting for each Bone Colour Set. Found on the far right, there's a toggle labeled "Use 'Constraint' Colouring". This option determines whether constraint colours (the blue, green, yellow, and orange colours that are automatically assigned to bones based on their constraint/ik/keyframed status) are drawn for that Bone Colour Set. This needs to be set for each colour set that requries it. By default, this is disabled for all colour sets (especially the defaults), as the constraint colours are really ugly when used in combination with custom colours in general.

Empties as Custom Bone Shapes

Now empties can also be used as the objects which are drawn as the custom representation of a bone. This makes things easier for riggers, as there are now a few more ready-made shapes that can be used. In the process, a few more drawtypes for empties have been added, which are beneficial to their use in this context.

Drawtypes added include:

• Circle - drawn as a 2d-circle on the x-y plane
• Cube - drawn as a wireframe of a simple cube
• Sphere - drawn as a wireframe of a simple sphere mesh
• Cone - draw a wireframe of a simple cone mesh

'Wire' Drawing Option

For complex production rigs (such as those for Peach and Plumiferos), the custom shapes used are often simple wireframes. This means that the controls won't obscure the meshes that much, but also mean that the whole armature must be drawn using the 'Wire' drawmode (for that object) so that these controls could be seen. This meant that other parts of the rigs didn't look as nice. A new option, 'W' button beside the field for the object to use, makes the custom bone shape always draw as a wireframe, so that it is always visible.

Paths Visualisation

Bone Paths have become more colourful to be easier to use. The following rules are used for determining the colour of a segment of a bone path:

• Segments that are before the current frame are drawn with black/grey lines
• Segments that are around (1 frame on either side of) the current frame are drawn with a green line
• Segments that are after the current frame are drawn with a light-blue line
• Paths of select bones are drawn brighter than those that belong to bones that are unselected, in order to make them stand out more

The visualisation of keyframes on the path has also been improved. The yellow keyframe dots are now drawn larger, so that they are easier to distinguish from the normal dots. Also, the option 'Keyframe Nums' has been added to display the frame numbers of keyframes, even if 'Frame Nums' is turned off, but only if 'Show Keys' is enabled.

In addition to more colourful visualisation, a new drawing option designed to improve performance is the option to only draw parts of the path around the current frame. By enabling the 'Around Current Frame' toggle in the 'Armature Visualisation' panel under 'Bone Paths Drawing', this option can be turned on. There you can specify the number of frames on either side of the current frame to show. Only the parts of the curve within these ranges around the current frame are drawn, and only if they exist in the path cache for that bone.

Paths Calculation (Cache Creation)

Before paths for a bone can be visualised, the motion of the bone(s) in question must be calculated and stored in a cache per bone. This allows for quicker display of paths.

The options which control the range of frames to store in the cache, and which end of the bone to cache (i.e. the 'Bone-Head Path' toggle) are now grouped separately from those for which are used for visualisation. These have been grouped with the commands to calculate and clear paths. These only work on the selected bones.

When inserting keyframes, if a bone has a path already, it's path will be recalculated automatically. However, only the parts of the path which are visible will be recalculated, in an effort to reduce the number of frames that will need to be calculated (to speed up the process).

New Mode: On Keyframes

This new drawmode for ghosts only draws ghosts which occur on keyframes within a frame range. It is useful for getting an idea of where the poses are in 3d-space with regard to other poses.

It is worth noting that this ghosting method can be slower (sometimes significantly) compared to the other ghosting methods due to the searches performed for keyframes.

New Option: Sel

This new drawmode for ghosts only draws ghosts which occur on keyframes within a frame range. It is useful for getting an idea of where the poses are in 3d-space with regard to other poses.

It is worth noting that this ghosting method can be slower (sometimes significantly) compared to the other ghosting methods due to the searches performed for keyframes.

To enable, click on the 'Sel' button, located beside the 'GStep' field.

Line Bones

Armature bones drawn in 'Line' mode that don't have any constraints/ik/keyframes/etc. colour indications were hard to see, as they were set to the colour of the background. This tweak makes these particular bones draw slightly darker than the minor-gridlines in the 3d-view, but not as dark as the major gridlines. It only applies when the bone isn't being drawn with custom bone colours.

Envelope DrawMode

In wire-frame mode, all bones were scaled and rotated by odd amounts when using 'Envelope' drawmode.