How to simply constrain a hand to something

#1

I’m new to motionbuilder and am having trouble doing (or even finding a tutorial for) something incredibly simple, that I know how to do in max and maya. All I need to do is constrain a character’s hand to something (in this case to another character).

I’ve gone through some constraint tutorials, but when I try to constrain the Wrist Effectors on my control rig to something (using a position constraint) it just doesn’t work. They won’t snap to the spot, they won’t animate as if they’re constrained, it just doesn’t do anything.

Can anyone share some insight on this, or perhaps point me towards a tutorial on a simple action such as tugging on a stationary object or shaking hands or anything other such action that requires a character to have a body part constrained to another object?

#2

What i usually do is i will position the hand where i want it to be positioned. Then i create an aux effector on the wrist. After that i hit the selection arrow on the tool bar which will create a drop down menu. From the menu select parent. Make sure you hit ctrl + A to show all joints.
You can now click and drag (with holding down “x”) the effector onto which ever joint you want the hand to follow. This will make the aux effector a child of that joint and the wrist will be constrained to whatever it is you want. Now this will parent it for the entire take, so if you want to animate this constraint you can animate the aux effector’s reach from 100 to 0 and you should be good to go.

Hope this helps.

#3

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