Can’t select parts of the rig

This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 1 month ago by Eric Szabo.

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August 3, 2025 at 3:32 pm #20558
Eric Szabo
Participant
The neck and head cannot be selected.
August 3, 2025 at 4:14 pm #96315
Tom Fransson
Participant
Hi Eric, if the bone is visible in the viewport then you can check if it is selectable in the outliner (the arrow like symbol). If it has been disabled while holding down shift, then the children also is disabled. So you can enable the parent and children while holding down shift or enable them one by one. Hope that helps.
August 3, 2025 at 6:53 pm #96316
Eric Szabo
Participant
Tom, Thanks. I checked that. Then rechecked it, expanding the entire nested stack. All are selectable.

I discovered the bones are selectable from the outliner, but the same bone is not selectable in the viewport. I have not encountered this issue before. Manually working through deep stacks like this is very inefficient. Other ideas?
August 3, 2025 at 7:11 pm #96317
Dwayne Savage
Participant
If you alt+left click over the bones does it show a list of the bones and can you select them thru this?
August 3, 2025 at 7:32 pm #96318
Wayne Dixon
Participant
Hi Eric,

Sorry you’re having issues.
This sounds like it might be a graphics card issue or some kind of bug (yes I know it’s a spider)

If you are sure that the bones are selectable – try this…

– jump into local view of just the armature (hit / ) and see if you can select the offending bones
– try disabling the selectability on the .geo collection
– check that “Edit > Lock Object Modes” is disabled (although this should only make a difference if you are selecting the mesh as well
– Also try holding alt and selecting the control (this should bring up a selection menu)

Also I don’t know what version of Blender you are using – but see if you have the same issue in 4.2 LTS and 4.5 LTS.

My thinking towards the graphics card issue is that maybe the gfx card thinks those parts are actually behind other things (even though they are not) and it’s telling Blender that you can’t select something that is behind something else.

(also try the alt select trick while positioning the viewport so there are multiple bones overlapping – see if the bones show up in the list)
August 4, 2025 at 12:36 pm #96319
Eric Szabo
Participant
Thanks for the feed back. Also, I have never clicked on a model from so many angles, so many times.

Tried all of these suggestions. Furious clicking the front orthographic view will sometimes catch the 2 problem bones (head & neck). Of course, in practice that meant selecting then immediately deselecting the target bone. Same view, alt-Lc worked, but with inconsistent results. Again, it’s an oddly specific and new issue to me.

Ultimately, searching in the Outliner was reliable, if inefficient. After a single key was set, the bone was selectable in the graph editor for additional edits. That said, Wayne’s screen named the bone he was working on. Without the bone’s names on screen, that wouldn’t have been a workable solution.

On the plus side, the course was repeatedly playing on a second screen while working through the issue. At this point, I’ve heard the dialogue so many times I can recite long stretches from memory.

Good course. Completed 1.5 times (the first pass was trashed, trying a reloaded file as a solution). Mr. Dixon wants reps, so I’ll redo it again tomorrow.
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