Two (not so) quick questions...

[sphere]

1. You can animate the weight of a constraint. If you want to do it with cstudio have a look at their help files.

2. If you are using cstudio, have a look at the tuts that come with it. I think there are a few examples.

[-Vormav-]

1. You need a link constraint controller (motion panel->assign controllers, select 'transform: position/rotation/scale', click the button with the question mark above that, and select link constraint from the list). From there, you can add the different objects you need to link to, and set the start times for when they're supposed be linked.

[Headless]

1. If you're looking for the very very simple way of doing it, just make a copy of the object, link one to the hand, don't link the other, and animate the opacity at the point that it goes from held to dropped.

[Rockin]

Although learning animation is very important, you'll get the best results using motion capture files (*.bip, *.bvh) if you use character studio. Animating humans is really difficult and takes lots of experience, but motion capture helps you get a good start if you're doing animation for games.

[Echarin]

1. You need a link constraint controller (motion panel->assign controllers, select 'transform: position/rotation/scale', click the button with the question mark above that, and select link constraint from the list). From there, you can add the different objects you need to link to, and set the start times for when they're supposed be linked.

It doesn't matter what time the link starts at for me, the objects (an IK chain and a box in this example) are linked from the beginning. What am I missing?

[SeaQuake]

Check out our free video tutorials at http://www.3dquakers.com
Your questions are answered there. If you want to go deeper, then you can invest in 3DS MAX Foundations vol 1 which is about general animation workflow in Max.

[-Vormav-]

It doesn't matter what time the link starts at for me, the objects (an IK chain and a box in this example) are linked from the beginning. What am I missing?

It's not linking in the normal sense, with the 'select and link' tool. One way you could break down the shot that you described would be to include one link for the hand and the object it's grabbing; set the start point of this link with the link constraint to 20. From there, the hand should do its motion without affecting the object, then starting at frame 20 the object gets linked to the hand and follows it. Further along in the scene, animate a dummy object or something falling to the ground, align the start point of this animation to the point where the object in the hand is at at the time you want it to be dropped. Then add another link to this falling object to the object that has the link constraint already and set the start time for this link constraint to the point where you need the links this way. The second link will override the actions from the first. So, what you get is a way of unlinking objects at certain times. It's not exactly "unlinking" per se, but rather allows you to link a single object to different objects at different times, and the different objects you link it to can be used to control its motion.
If you need to add reactor dynamics or something to the animation of the falling object, you can still do that with this: Setup the start time for the reactor calculations to the right point in the timeline, create a duplicate of the object your hand is carrying, run the dynamics on the duplicate item, and then just use that item as the object to link to with the link constraint.

Hope that makes some sense.

[Echarin]

It's not linking in the normal sense, with the 'select and link' tool. One way you could break down..................................

I know, but the results I mentioned above is all I get.

[Echarin]

Ok, I think I've got it now.

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