Picking Up and holding Things..

[stooch]

parent the object to the hand.

duplicate the object and put it on the ground.

animate the character with the object in hand, matching the position of two objects as the character goes through the "pickup" motion..

in lightwave use envelopes in object render properties to hide the ground object and unhide the in hand object being "picked up". :)

[isobarxx]

There's a function called DynamicParent to do just that. Search the docs for "dynamic parent" for a tutorial on how to do it. Basically just using that function in an expression.

[Gitch]

Thanks..... Some how I missed that Dynamicparenting, that is exactly what I'am looking for..

[Gitch]

Okay, I have a character he is picking up a large object with both hands so I really don't need to parents. I tried dynamic parenting but I get the object spinning which I don't want when I turn on dynamic parenting..

Any solutions are welcome...

[stooch]

I gave you a solution. it works perfectly for me, you can choose to figure out a different one but there is nothing wrong with mine.

Make IK for both arms and parent both IK goals to the object and then use the object to animate your characters arms, then swap the object visibility in renderer.

So, the workflow would look something like this:

1) setup you character with and IK/FK switch.

2) setup the object using your rig in IK mode, place the hand goals where you want them and make a pose for your hands to hold it. forget about your IK for now and switch back to FK mode.

3) animate your character grabbing the object and getting ready to pick it up with FK.

4) when your hands are close to the object, blend over into IK mode and the hands will snap to it. Now is a good time to set the hands with your "grab" pose.



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for animating a one handed grab, you dont need an IK/FK switch because you can just use IK the whole time with the object parented to the hand you want to use. Simply animate the hands closing around the item and continue animating as usual. all you have to do is duplicate the object at the point where its being picked up and then swap visibility in layout or whatever renderer you use....

[isobarxx]

That's interesting. It spins? Can you describe your setup or post a scene file?

There's also another dynamic parenting plugin at the bottom of http://www.animationsnippets.com/plugins/index.html (linked from zoogono.com Plugins section) but it should be pretty straight forward to set up.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pmGmessiah/files/Sample_Content_Public/staff_handling.fxs has an example of dynamically parenting between two "hands" and also auto-centering an object between the two.

[Gitch]

Please post a scene file stooch i would like to see it...

[stooch]

i dont have a messiah scene file of the double hand setup because last time i did it was in maya.

the single hand scenario is nothing more then an IK setup that can be easily replicated with any of the premade rigs that come with the program.

actually this is probably a good way to demonstrate the dual hand setup as well..

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