How to make the armature preserve its position in edit mode?

(Optional Read) Recently, I’ve been working on some animations for my FPS project, and during the process, I realized that during certain keys, outer faces of my model were overlapping with its inner faces, which was resulting in normal issues. I needed to investigate exactly which faces were overlapping, but the problem is, the moment you switch to edit mode, the armature reverts to its initial location, rotation, and scale. I thought maybe other users might be facing similar issues and don’t know how to resolve this issue and decided to write a short tutorial about it.

How to preserve armature’s position in “Edit Mode”?

To ensure the armature remains in its current position, navigate to the “Armature” modifier (Make sure you are in “Object Mode”, as the modifiers tab may disappear if you are in, for example, “Pose Mode”). Then, activate the option called:

  • Edit Mode — Display modifier in Edit mode.
Lazy Loaded Image

“Edit Mode — Display modifier in Edit mode” option

This will allow us to edit the armature in its current position in “edit mode”. After that, within the same modifier, activate the “On Cage” option.

Lazy Loaded Image

“On Cage” option shows where the armature will sit if the “Armature” modifier had been applied. This option is a little bit more complicated than the explanation here, but I don’t want to bog down this short tutorial with a bunch of information that you might not need, so that’s all we need to know about it in this process.

Now, if you switch to edit mode, the armature will be in its current key and won’t reset back to its initial position.

Note: If you are tired of watching video tutorials and would like to see more text-based tutorials like this one from me, you can support me on Patreon so I can dedicate more time to creating them.