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Ender0910
03-27-2003, 02:51 AM
Hey guys. First time poster, long time reader (heh).

Well anyways, I've been working with Maya a lot lately, and well, I've run into a problem. In 3d studio max there was a button called "link" which basically let the target inherit the rotation and translation of the parent.

is there such a thing in Maya? Not even necissarily for animation. But say I have some parts that I want to rotate on a hinge which is connected to something else which would rotate...

should I set up a bone structure? I was looking around and constraints looked promising but I wasn't sure if they were what I wanted (couldn't get them to work :P)


so basically, if there is such a tool, can you tell me what it is and point me in the right direction? Just a name is good too coz I can look it up in the Maya help files :)

edit: read the FAQ... fixed the title.
nautilus
03-27-2003, 03:46 AM
Click your first object then "Shift click" the next object. Last hit the p key on you keyboard

Thats should do the trick :-)
Ender0910
03-27-2003, 04:31 AM
wow! that worked perfectly. Thank you!

out of curiosity, what action was that? (pressing P) :)
Emergence
03-27-2003, 06:19 AM
There are many ways to connect stuff in maya.

the "p" command is for parenting. works the same as max.

For parenting a bunch of objects you can group (ctrl g) them. This will put all of the selected objects under a single transform node. this is a little different to a 3dmax group.

You can also constrain nodes (under constrain menu), which allows you to easily hook up different types of attributes eg rotation values but not position values. and you can constrain to multiple objects and blend between them. (maya 5 also has a parent constraint that allows you to blend between different parents!)

or you can use the connection edtior to directly connect individual attributes of nodes to each other. (this is most easily done from the hypershade panel, of all places)

If you need to animate or adjust the relationship between the attributes you can use a driven key.
(right click in the channel box)

or for complete control you can create an expression that runs in one attribute and looks at 1 or more others and can add all sorts of functions and values into the mix.
(right click in the channel box)
edit: actually i should have said that the expression will be a seperate node that is not directly related to any one attribute.

I think that's it. bit of an info overload really.

-Richard
Ender0910
03-27-2003, 07:02 AM
awsome. thanks for all the info!

no amount of information is too much :) I'm really excited about learning Maya right now and any tips/tricks/methods that you mention help me to understand the program better.

:D
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