wrote a Blender script to auto-offset bone chains for overlap — drag it down the hierarchy

Tail chains. Hair chains. Cape bones. Every time I finish blocking out the primary motion I spend another 20 minutes in the graph editor sliding keys forward on each bone. bone_02 gets +2, bone_03 gets +4, and so on. It works. It's also incredibly tedious when the chain is 8+ bones long.

So I wrote a script. Point it at a root bone, it walks the full hierarchy and offsets all keyframes by frames_per_level * depth. Root stays where it is, first-level children shift by +2, their children by +4, etc. Handles get moved along with the key positions so your bezier curves don't come out distorted.

import bpy

def offset_overlap_chain(armature_obj, root_bone_name, frames_per_level=2):
    action = armature_obj.animation_data.action
    if not action:
        print("No active action found on this object.")
        return

    def walk(bone_name, depth):
        if depth > 0:
            offset = depth * frames_per_level
            for fc in action.fcurves:
                if f'pose.bones["{bone_name}"]' in fc.data_path:
                    for kp in fc.keyframe_points:
                        kp.co.x += offset
                        kp.handle_left.x += offset
                        kp.handle_right.x += offset

        bone = armature_obj.data.bones.get(bone_name)
        if bone:
            for child in bone.children:
                walk(child.name, depth + 1)

    walk(root_bone_name, 0)
    for fc in action.fcurves:
        fc.update()
    print(f"Chain offset complete. Root: '{root_bone_name}', {frames_per_level}f per level.")

# run with your armature selected
obj = bpy.context.active_object
offset_overlap_chain(obj, "tail_01", frames_per_level=2)

A few things to know before you run it:

• It walks the entire subtree from the root, so if your chain bones have accessory children (twist helpers, physics targets, whatever) those get offset too. Either clean up the hierarchy first or add a name-based skip check.
• Long chains push your action past the original end frame. Extend it beforehand or trim afterward.
• Don't aim this at a spine root unless you actually want the whole upper body lagging behind the hips.

What I want to add next: a falloff curve so the per-level offset isn't strictly linear, and a direction flag to offset backward for anticipation instead of forward for follow-through. The destructive key editing makes me nervous, so I always duplicate the action first. Anyone done something like this non-destructively? Thinking maybe NLA offset strips could work but I haven't gone down that road yet. Curious how people are handling chain overlap beyond just manually dragging keys.