CGTalk - Node parent/link constraint ? does it exist ?

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DarkMantid

01-21-2003, 06:16 AM

Greetings Good forum dwellers ! .. Im very much hoping someone out there could help me with this problem im having. Im looking for something like an animatable linking constraint... Lets say i have a character that I want to be walking along then pick up a can on the ground .... then perhaps later constrain the hand to a table... How would i constrain the Hand to the can ,,, and then be able to animate the can and have the hand follow it.. and later constrain the hand to a table then move the back/or pelvis and have the hand stay onto the table.

In 3dsmax this was called a link constraint.

Ive messed with point constraints in max and they seem not to do what i want :/

thanx for your time

Flo

01-21-2003, 06:28 AM

hi there.

right now , you have to built a setup with pointConstraints , to get an animated `parent-constraint`.
you would need multiple target (eg. locators) to blend the pointConstraint weights to.

also you could do the same by mel.
Its a bit of wok to setup, though maya 5 will get a new parent-constraint !

Flo

pete

01-21-2003, 10:52 PM

Are you sure thats the only way to do it, It sounds like a pretty nasty hack for somthing that should be so simple.

If you point constrained his hand to the can, the orientation of the hand wouldn't work when the can rotated, so you would have to also use an orientaion constraint! Not to mention the fact that the points would have to be offset so the hand didn't go to the very center of the can..

Surely someone else has a good method for this!?!
In Max you could say - at frame 0, the object is parented to the world then say at frame 50 (when he picks up the can prehaps) the object is parented to the can..... Don't tell me Max has a better system for it than Maya...

So if anyone has another method, it would be much apreciated...

-petey

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