Change axes of a bone

Tomateche

Hello.
It's probably a stupid question, but I'd like to know how to change the axes of a bone without change its position... :rolleyes:
My goal is to make match the orientation with an other bone constrainted on the green axis scale.

Nate

For the math to work properly, all bones work the same way, eg the bone points in the X direction. Depending on what you need to accomplish, you can probably use two bones at the same position, one rotated or flipped and the other pointing the direction you want.

Tomateche

Thanks Nate for your quick answer.
My goal can seem a bit tricky : I want to use only the main face controller bone to constraint the rotation of the "nose" bones (red vertical bone) and the horizontal scale of the left glass/eye (green bone), both with IK + constraints.
I get this "idea" after have done all my face rig. So I had to rebuilt a part of it in "world mode" to make matchthe glass-bone axis with the green bone axes.
This method is efficient. But I'd like to apply it more easily on a new character.

Nate

In the future we'll have constraints to bind a transform property to another. For example, rotation to scale. That should do what you want more easily!

Tomateche

Sure !
Rotation to translation already works -partly-, but reading your doubtful comment in this topic Gears and rack, it seems to be a (positive) bug 🙂

I take this opportunity to make a suggestion : have the possibility to nest secondary (looped) animations in a main animation. For example, have a collection of speaking heads animations (with different emotions) that we could add/replace in the main body animation. (like movie clips in Flash)

Nate

Ah, it's not a bug, it just wasn't clear what your project was doing.

You can play multiple animations at once already (see the Preview view), though you can't set keys to play/stop another animation.
Preview view - Spine User Guide
We have improvements planned to make Preview easier to use, eg to record a sequence and timing of animations.