What Are Bone Collections in Blender?

Bone collections in Blender are an organizational feature introduced in version 4.0 that allows animators and riggers to group, color-code, and manage specific bones within an armature. Replacing the older, limited 32-layer bone system, bone collections provide a flexible, named, and hierarchical way to control the visibility, selectability, and appearance of controls on complex character rigs.

Key Capabilities of Bone Collections

  • Unlimited Named Groups: Unlike the legacy system which restricted rigs to 32 numbered layers, bone collections allow you to create as many uniquely named collections as your project requires (e.g., "Face Controls," "FK Arms," "IK Legs").
  • Nested Hierarchy: You can organize collections into parent and child relationships. Hiding a parent bone collection automatically hides all child collections nested beneath it.
  • Overlapping Assignments: A single bone can belong to multiple bone collections simultaneously. This allows for flexible grouping, such as placing a bone in both a "Left Arm" collection and an "FK Controls" collection.
  • Visibility and Selectability Toggles: Toggle the viewport visibility, solo state, or editability of entire groups of bones with a single click, keeping your workspace uncluttered during animation.

Why Bone Collections Replaced Bone Layers and Groups

Prior to Blender 4.0, riggers relied on a dual system: 32 un-named Bone Layers for visibility management, and separate Bone Groups for assigning colors to controls. This design was restrictive and difficult to navigate on complex production rigs.

Bone collections unified these two concepts into a single streamlined system. Custom color themes can now be assigned directly to bone collections, automatically styling all member bones while simultaneously managing their display state.

How to Use Bone Collections

  1. Select your armature and enter Edit Mode or Pose Mode.
  2. Open the Armature Data Properties tab (green armature icon) in the Properties Editor.
  3. Locate the Bone Collections panel.
  4. Click the + button to create a new collection and double-click it to rename.
  5. Select the desired bones in the viewport, highlight your target collection in the list, and click Assign.