Conflict with Layer Manager and Rigify Possible BUG

Not sure if this is a bug.
When I use the layer manager and rigify together my feet and hand bones vanish.


1. generate a rigify rig
2. in layer manager set the "all objects on layer to draw wire" beachball button on.
3. toggle draw wire off
4. select rig, enter pose mode. Feet, hands, and finger bones vanish.

The missing bones are still there. You can select them in edit mode or in wireframe view.

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WORKAROUND

I have found that in pose mode with the missing bone selected (wireframe display) turn on wireframe on the display option under the bone tab, where you assign the custom shape.

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Storyboards or Animatic

MOVING ON

I have been finalizing the rigs and I think I have most of what I need for Bus Stop working. So I'm blocking out the shots. I have gone about this backwards in a way. I have a dozen rough storyboards that have been reworked a bit over the years. I was creating a polished storyboard to make my animatic from. But...

old storyboard image

I can see this in my head for the most part (I think). I have most of my assets completed. I started staging my assets and rendering shots to place in the polished storyboard to build and animatic from... Redundant? I rendered shot1, 12 frames. Then I layed them out in Photoshop, but I think I should just go ahead skip the polished storyboard and just create the animatic. I am learning Fusion 7 which is free now. It will be a great learning project. Could do it much faster in AE since I already know that program....

Anyway here is my shinny page 2 storyboard I am unlikely to ever print.

New Redundant storyboard

NOTES:

setup storyboard set using linked assets

blocked out shots for shot 1 and shot 2 rendered for storyboard,

figured it would be redundant to make the storyboard from renders since I'm not likely to print them. layout animatic Fusion/AE if fusion is too much to figure out.

Rig revamp and Face rig

New Year New tweaks

Started revamping assets a few months ago. Builts some cars and beefed up the set. Anything I could do to avoid working on Ebil's model and rig. Finally sat down last week and started slogging through the skinning problems I was having with rigify. relearning all the things I did not really learn in the first place. I ended up scraping my old rig because I just simply broke it. I adjusted Ebil's base mesh a bit made a few improvements. Started creating shape keys for shoulder and hip deforms. It just did not seem to work for me the way it does for the gurus. Then about 2 days ago it all started working.

Here are some of the current results.

Working on lipsync shapekeys next. Then onto Timmy. 

Parenting objects in Blender 3D Child stops following parent

Parenting Snafoo

I learned today that if an object has physics on it, it will not work as the child of another object. At some point while modeling the body of my Van, I somehow added a rigid body property to it. When I would parent the body to an empty for rigging it would follow the parent once, then it would stop following. The parent child relationship showed up properly in the outliner, however the child would not follow the translations of the parent. This stumped me for about an hour. I was searching the web and finally found a short paragraph somewhere that mentioned the physics issue. Hope this helps someone else.

Once I removed the rigid body node, The parenting works fine.

Back in the saddle again

Out with the old

I took a break from Ebil mid year to work on a pro bono project :

graveyard

I started working on Ebil again a few months ago and have been reworking old assets.

I lost a good bit of work when my computer crashed. I recovered my project files from the cloud and other backups. In the process I decided to rework some of the things I never really felt 100% about. Mainly the characters. I've spent a little time retypoing Ebil's mesh and I plan to re-rig him. I'm not very good at the rigging process. I'm using rigify with a few custom tweaks I have watched a half dozen tuts on how to use the rig, but I can't seem to get it to just poof parent perfect to my mesh. Still getting weird tears an bends in the mesh. I'm not getting a full animatable range. For the Bus Stop sketch I think it is adequate. There is not a lot of complicated animation. I want to get the project done. I have to consider some things good enough. Scope creep is a thing.

I have been updating the traffic fleet. Hard surface modeling is much easier to me. I could make cars all day long.

Ebil Fitness Camp Day 008

And more walking

yet another walk cycle. 24 frames, 24 Frames per second. Stride, strike, pass, stride.

I do like the timing of this one better. Less popping and jerking. I think the other one was using fewer frames. This is still rough, but I need to understand these basic poses better before I start breaking it down more. Made more sense today.

Ebil Fitness Camp Day 007

Licensed to kill?

I have the fitness camp surrounded by vast array of columns. I have to keep Ebil contained.