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Usage & Settings

  • B / Shift+B — Skip — move one node up / down the meaningful hierarchy (Drawing → deform group → peg). Effects, composites, cutters, and the modules inside deform groups are skipped automatically; you land on the deform group itself, never on its internal curves.
  • Ctrl+Alt+B / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B — Jump — hop only between nodes flagged with the jump symbol (+). One jump skips past everything to the next flagged node — handy for big rigs.

These are two independent navigations: the Skip keys never need a marker; the Jump keys only stop on flagged nodes.

Markers

  • Skip / hide (-) — name a node with this symbol and navigation skips it entirely (even if it's a peg or drawing). Use it to hide the rig's wiring — driver pegs, constraint helpers, math nodes — so B / Shift+B only land on real, animatable nodes.
  • Jump (+) — flags a node as a jump target for Ctrl+Alt+B.

A marker is a single symbol from the fixed set - + . _ , =, placed at the first or last character of a node's name. That's it — no typed text, no separators.

Tag Manager

Different riggers tag nodes with different symbols. The Tag Manager is where you normalize, apply, or remove those tags across a whole character in one pass — so the markers above mean the same thing everywhere. Run Octo_SkipNodes_TagManager from the Scripting toolbar.

Octo Skip Nodes — Tag Manager 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# Control What it does
1 ⚙ Settings · ? Help ⚙ opens the Settings (symbols, position, license); ? opens docs / report-a-bug.
2 Targets toolbar Show filter (below) · Select ▾ highlight rows by category / tag (below) · 🔍 locate the selected row in the Node View · + add the current Node-View selection (a group expands to its contents; a node is added directly) · − remove the selected (or checked) items from the list.
3 Category sections Targets are grouped into Pegs, Drawings, Deformers and Groups (empty sections are hidden). Effects/composites aren't shown — navigation skips them anyway.
4 Symbol · Position The tag this section will apply — a palette symbol and Prefix/Suffix. Per section, so you can give pegs one tag and deformers another.
5 All · None Check / uncheck every row in the section at once.
6 The list (checkboxes + tree) Check a row to include it in the rename. Click a row to highlight it (then 🔍 locates it, or − removes it). Deformers show a Group → Chain → Curve tree.
7 Apply Renames every checked row to the section's Symbol+Position, in one batch. Collisions are detected and block the apply.

Show filter

The Show dropdown narrows the list:

Mode Shows
All nodes every node you added (tag it from scratch)
Tagged (any) only nodes that already carry a palette symbol
Skip tag (-) only nodes tagged with your configured skip symbol
Jump tag (+) only nodes tagged with your configured jump symbol

The Skip/Jump options read the symbols from Settings, so re-tagging a rig built with a different convention is one filter + one Apply.

Checkbox vs. selection

These are independent, on purpose:

  • the checkbox marks what the rename applies to;
  • clicking a row (highlight) is what 🔍 locates in the Node View and what − removes from the list.

A row that already carries the exact tag you picked is dimmed ("already done") — change the Symbol and it lights back up.

Selecting rows in bulk

Selection is multi: Shift-click a range, Ctrl-click to add/remove individual rows — and it can span categories (select a peg and a deformer together). The Select ▾ toolbar dropdown highlights rows by category (Pegs / Drawings / Deformers / Groups) or by tag (Skip - / Jump +) across the whole list.

With several rows selected, clicking one checkbox toggles all the selected rows at once (the selection stays put). The keyboard mirrors this — scoped to the list the mouse is over, or all lists when the pointer is outside them:

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+A / Ctrl+Shift+A select all rows / clear the selection
Ctrl+Alt+A / Ctrl+Shift+Alt+A check / uncheck all boxes

Deform groups — collapsed vs. expanded

Deformers are a fold tree. A group's checkbox behaves like Toon Boom's Timeline:

  • collapsed — toggling the group governs everything inside it (cascades to all its chains/curves);
  • expanded — the group toggles only itself; tick the curves box-by-box.

Undo / redo

Renames aren't on Harmony's undo stack, so the Tag Manager keeps its own — while the window is focused it undoes / redoes renames (Apply), removes (−), and checkbox changes (bulk and All / None):

  • Ctrl+Z — undo the last action
  • Ctrl+Shift+Z / Ctrl+Y — redo

Settings

Run Octo_SkipNodes_Config from the Scripting toolbar — or click ⚙ in the Tag Manager:

Octo Skip Nodes settings dialog 1 2 3 4 5
# Field What it does
1 Skip / hide symbol The symbol that hides a node from navigation
2 Jump symbol The symbol that flags Jump targets
3 Position Prefix (start) or suffix (end) of the node name — applies to both symbols
4 License Trial / activation status + Manage License…
5 ? Help Documentation and report-a-bug

Each symbol is picked from the fixed set - + . _ , = (one each). The symbol chosen for one is removed from the other's list, so Skip and Jump can never collide. Settings are saved to octoSkipNodes/skip_nodes_config.json.

Why it's powerful

Combined with Octo Rig Composer, you can make a peg driven entirely by the MC widget and hide it with -. The animator never trips over the rig's machinery — they navigate only the clean Drawing → deform → peg hierarchy, while the widget-driven plumbing stays invisible underneath (unless they click it in the Node View on purpose). And when a scene mixes rigs from different artists, the Tag Manager re-normalizes every marker to your convention in one pass.