CGTalk - A Character picking up a stationary object

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Blueman

05-01-2003, 11:53 PM

I am about to start a scene in which a character picks up a stationary object. What is the best way to approach this situation? My question being how do I have the character pick up the object, and then have the object stay attached, or follow in hand through out the scene, without having to animate the object in every frame , matching it to the hand? And in the same way have the character set down the object, and it become stationary once again? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hugh

05-02-2003, 12:28 AM

To do this, you need two locators. One parented to the hand of the character, and one where the object is meant to start.

Point constrain the object to both locators, and also orient constrain it. Then animate the hand moving down to where it's locator is exactly over the base position locator, at that stage, animate the weights on the constraints so that the object follows the hand rather than the locator on the ground.

skigil

05-02-2003, 04:42 AM

you could always do replacement animation.

lets say your character was going to pick up a ball...

have a ball that's parented and positioned onto the hand (hidden). then have another identical ball that's stationary (visible) when the hand gets to the stationary ball's point, switch the visiblity of both of them so that the ball in the hand is visible and the ball that is stationary is hidden. poof, you have a character picking up an object.

of course, this only works with simple objects, like balls.

enjoy!

-skigil

Hugh

05-02-2003, 10:52 AM

The other (potential) problem with that method is that if you can't quite get the objects to perfectly line up, for whatever reason, then it will 'jump'

Using the constraints, you can have a couple of frames for it going from one to the other..... Could look smoother....

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