How do I have two bones both control only one?

[Oliver_Noone-Jones]

I need to have my armature stand on its front toes and its back toes. I know this armature isn’t quite human and that’s why it has back toes.

The blue triangle points toward the points I need the bones to rotate around. The control bones in the blue circles are the bones that need to control the rotations.

All of the green bones are control bones that keep certain bones in place. The red oval bone moves the entire foot.

This is what standing on the front toes will look like except the red bone in the blue circle is meant to follow the one of the bones in the back toes and is roughly meant to be where the other blue circle is.

This is what standing on the back toes will look like except the red bone in the blue circle is meant to follow the one of the bones in the front toes and is roughly meant to be where the other blue circle is. Also for clarity the yellow bones in the black oval are the only yellow bones that don’t move.

At the moment I keep swamping the parent of some of the bones to get the foot to do the right thing. But I need the red “C” shaped control bones to be able to be used at the same time.

Does anyone know how to do this?

[FedPete]

It’s difficult to grasp what you want to achieve!
Break the problems in smaller parts.
Blender bones do have modifiers, maybe you can use that to copy behavior from other bones.
You can have multiple bone groups in one armature (bones don’t have to be connected)

[NP5]

My guess is IK is not made for the situation. Just plain FK bones and move each one in the manner you need.

[Oliver_Noone-Jones]

I still need IK to make other functions of the leg work, If I take the IK away the leg wont move properly with the feet. I just need a way to toggle between these controls or do them simultaneously. I think I have many bone groups in my armature because many of my bones are not connected to the one above. What modifiers could I use to make this possible?

I have found out if put the 3d cursor to where I want the pivot point and selecting all the control bones I want to rotate around and set rotation to 3d cursor, I can get the same behavior I want. That makes me think, is there a way to not have anything parented to the bone I want things to rotate around and instead have the bone select the right control bones. This idea is pretty much the same thing but a different way of doing things. How would I get it to work this way?

[FedPete]

You can use empties as parent of bones or vertex groups.
You can create ‘drivers’ which controls, connect other parts of blender.

I have no real experience, but I know there are better tutorials on the web, explaining armatures in a more professional matter.

[NP5]

There is a reason the course keeps it very simple! Perhaps ask in the GameDev discord channel? You need an animation specialist.

[Oliver_Noone-Jones]

Drivers seems the only thing that could work but it would be very complex because I don’t want to toggle between the two I want to use them at the same time. A simpler solution could be to select the control bone and have that bone select many other bones. Is that possible? Could I get a bone to simply select the bones I need to rotate around. How could I do this?

[FedPete]

You need to introduce a bone to control other bones.
This control bone, you can give another shape for better UI control.
But it also depends on how those bones are related, you can not create loops. bone setup related to itself (or a part of). You need to think in hierarchies.

[Oliver_Noone-Jones]

Ok, thank you. I understand how it works pretty well now. I might not be able to get exactly what I want but I can get close enough. After all I could always get the result I wanted but it would take a while to select everything and do it. Now I’ve got a more efficient set up to what I had.