bone icon Bones

create bones

Bones are a very simple yet extremely useful tool. They are layers used to control any spatial property or Bézier shape.

Creation

  1. Select the properties
    • Click on the Bones button
    • Maintaining the Alt key will pick a random color for the new bones
    • Maintaining the Ctrl key will ignore the tangents when creating bones on Bézier paths

Hint

You can remove bone layers and recreate them at any time.
This is especially useful when rigging Bézier paths where you do not need to rig all the tangents: you can either remove the ones you don’t need, or create them later.
To create missing tangents on a Bézier path, select the corresponding tangent in the effects of the layer containing the path, and then click the Bones button.

One bone will be created for each spatial property and for each vertex and tangent of Bezier paths.
Bones can be used to control puppet pins, but also for example the emitter of a particle system, the origin of a lens flare, and any Bezier paths (shapes or masks).

Note

Bones work on Bézier path only in After Effects CC2018 and newer.

When the property is controlled by a bone, you can rig the bone itself, parent it to other layers (and Structures of Duik), etc. which make rigging effects very easy. This is the easiest way to rig a character with the puppet tool of After Effects, or even a way to rig directly the shapes used to draw the character.

Bones GIF

Edit Bones

Note

Available in Standard and Expert modes only.

In the additionnal panel of the Bones, you can adjust their appearance.
All changes made in this panel will affect all selected Bones and the creation of new Bones.

edit bones edit bones