I like the ideas here,
wouldnt it be nice that the mesh around the bones would dim automagically while you hover around a bone that's inside the mesh?
this could be a property for the bone to have on / off, so you can set in the rig the bones that will benefit from this, maybe by default they're all on, and if youre getting into more complex rigs you choose not to have this function for certain bones.

That's what image #3 already shows.

i meant without holding Z, just by hovering

actually forget my comment, this makes more sense.

Ah, right. Yes, we may test various methods to engage and disengage this view.

amazing man, I think youre doing a great job!!!,
cant wait to test the new stuff out!

Have you put some thought into how to combine bones with the face selection thingy?

This view will not be necessary when using Face Maps. Face Maps are a rigging feature, and so we needed a way to pose armatures if riggers haven't added Face Maps.

Oh yes, totally, I was saying if you're thinking of a combined workflow with this and facemaps, say i want to use facemaps for the facial rig, but for the rest of the body just bare bones.

That will be for the rigger to decide.

Facemaps work especially well for limbs, which are very easy to select and manipulate.

Face maps for faces, and bone xrays for bones. Perfect :)

BTW, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) I take it that your previous suggestion - about hovering over hidden bones without pressing any keys and having the one under the cursor show up over the mesh - as being analogous to a kind of "preselection highlighting" like tool? As we don't really want to support preselection highlighting for various reasons, I doubt we'd support that particular variant either.

On another note, as I was mentioning to @William Reynish (billrey), there's also the issue of what kind of radius we want to use for including/not-including bones for the zkey-hold thing.

@Joshua Leung (aligorith) : forgive me, I wasnt trying to sneak in a preselection highligting it just felt like it would be nice to let the user know when you can click...

@William Reynish (billrey) : what i meant with the statement above is will facemaps work in armatures pose mode?, is that the intended workflow?, because I dont see use for it if I have to jump out of the armature selection to select an object to select a facemap,
that's what i was trying to ask.

In T54949#499633, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) wrote:

@Joshua Leung (aligorith) : forgive me, I wasnt trying to sneak in a preselection highligting it just felt like it would be nice to let the user know when you can click...

@William Reynish (billrey) : what i meant with the statement above is will facemaps work in armatures pose mode?, is that the intended workflow?, because I dont see use for it if I have to jump out of the armature selection to select an object to select a facemap,
that's what i was trying to ask.

We want to make Face Maps work in Pose Mode instead. That way it won't be an issue.

Amazing <3