Bendy Bone Handles Addon

October 9, 2019June 21, 2021 New Media Supply 1 Comment Bones

The Bendy Bone Handles is a addon that provides a bendy bone with handles. With this bone we can intuitively deform a mesh. And with Shift+D we can copy the mesh with bone and make variations of our object. Because the addon doesn’t live in the N-Panel it doesn’t harm installing it in Blender 2.8x. Just in case we need it.

How does the Beny Bone Handles Addon work?

How the Bendy Bone Handles Addon works.

For those who don’t have access to the video, here in short how the addon works. Start experimenting with a beam and divide it a few times so that it is suitable for deformations with armature. Then Press Shift+A and under Armature you find the Bendy Bone. At this point you will want to use the “Show X-ray” option in the viewport’s menu. This way you can see the bone and your object at the same time.

Move the bone inside the object (beam, cube, etc) and scale it. Scale it so that the top part of the bone is not inside of the mesh. This because the top-part seems to be a handle and not a bone.

Once the alignment is done, select the object and then the bone. To make the bone deforming the object, select the object then the bone. Press Ctrl+P and choose: automatic weights.

That is all and we can now enjoy playing with the Bendy Bone that has handles. So, select the bone, go in pose mode (Ctrl+TAB), select the bottom or top and use one of the translation shortcuts. For example: R, Y to rotate on the X-axis or S to scale. etc.

Where can we download the Addon?

You can download the Bendy Bone Handles addon on Github. And for up-to-date information check the Bendy Bone Handles thread on Blender-artists.
Installing the addon is as usual. In Blender you go to Edit > Preferences > Addons. There you click on Install and navigate to the .zip-file you just downloaded. Click install-addon > Save Preferences > Refresh. You will then have a bendy bone under your Shift+A > Armature.