Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Bone Layers

Jim’s rig is looking much more functional, but you still have a lot of bones that you’re not supposed to move (like the helpers) and they might get in the way while you work. To hide them, you’ll use Bone Layers.

Bone Layers are similar to Scene Layers, but they work only inside the Armature. On the Armature tab, in the Skeleton panel, you’ll see four sets of little squares. The first two sets, under Layers, are the layers themselves. The other two sets, under Protected Layers, are layers that reset in other files when you link this rig to another .blend file to prevent changes to them (like the helpers, for example), but that’s an advanced feature and won’t be covered here.

When you’re in Edit or Pose Mode, you can select one or ...