Object moves along with a character.

[Littleberu]

In MAX, you could always link the hat to the hand or the body part that is involved in the action.

[Winner]

haha as simple as it sounds, this is an age old and complex problem in 3D animation..

as Littleberu mentioned, MAX has a user friendly "link constraint" that will help you do this fairly easily, but if youre using Maya you will need to use your brain and get your thinking cap on... you need to animate weight values between multiple constraints, as well as find a way to stop "popping" between different positions.

if you want an easy solution, this might help... its by far the "dirtiest" way to do this, and i would normally suggest you find out how constraints work first before takling this problem so you can do it properly, but it works and I did this too many times when i was first starting out.

have 2 hats in the scene. One hat is parented to the hand and one hat is parented to the head ( if you dont know what object parenting means - look it up on the internet )... then all you need to do is animate the visibility of the objects as the switch takes place, so as the hat is in his hand the hat on the head is invisible, then as he puts the hat on his head you hide the one in his hand and show the one on the head ( making sure that the pose of the hat matches as close as you can )

anyway... hope that helps somehow.

[RSliver]

Hi Sampaio =)


...how about constraints?
You could use e.g. 2 pointConstraints. Implement two locators in your rig - one at the hand one at the head wich serve as (constraint)targets for your hat. Then you could animate the (goal)weight to appoint wich locator the hat shall follow...

Hope I could give you a hint


Ralph

[BigMouth]

This is a fairly easy thing to do in 3DS Max. I'm not fluent in Maya to tell you exactly what to do...

In 3DS Max...

Create a dummy or point helper and align & position it to the man's and then link it. Create another one and do the same to the man's head.

Place the hat on the man's head on frame 0 and link constraint the hat to the head dummy. Then on whatever frame he takes the hat off (frame 71 for instance), link constraint it to the point/dummy on the man's hand.

Using dummys/points instead of linking objects directly to each other allows you to still have the advantage of a link constraint, but you still have room to independently move/rotate the object WHILE it's being link constrainted to the hand... without actually having to mess up the position/rotation of the object by actually moving the object. It allows a little bit of buffer room. It's also important for game engines which won't allow you to change the heirarchy of joints.

[Sampaio]

im sorry big mouth.. im using maya.. i forgot to mention that.. but thanx alot for ur help.. R.Silver, constraints.. what an issue man... this is what i was looking for in my net surfing for this subject's tutorials.. but no results.. but i wont give up.. ill keep on trying what u suggested.

Mr. Winner.. thats really a nice idea.. but it works for illusionists.. wow man i need to be really accurate in placing the 2 hats at a point of visibile and invisible.. but brilliant.. i can do that.. and im so familiar with parenting objects..

thanx guys.. all of u helped me and im really glad to join the group.. now let me get back to my maya and hit the models..

cheers..

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