I need to animate an armature and an object at the same time, but can't

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hello everyone,

I have been trying for two days already, watched a lot of tutorials, but I can’t figure out how to do this.

I need to create several animations in the same file, so I can export them to Unity.

The problem is, my character holds an item, which is parented to a bone in the armature, and I need to change the rotation of that item in some of the animations (this is because I need the character to hold it with different grips).

If I keyframe only the armature and don’t touch the object, I can do it just fine. Now, as soon as I move the item itself, I either get a new action or if I try to keyframe both in the same action, somethings ends up screwed up.

I also tried using the NLA editor, but I can’t seem to merge strips together in order to get individual actions that contain both the armature and item’s movements.

I never thought something as simple as this would bring so much trouble.

How can I go about doing this?

2

I usually create one Armature for the character and the prop. The PropBone can be parented to any Character’s bone, or it can be separate. But belonging to the same Armature. Then you can skin your prop to that bone or parent or make a constraint. Then animate in one Action this Armature. Usually no problems with it this way.

3

Thanks. Alright, I just tried this.

I’m not sure if I’m doing it the right way, but I can’t seem to get the item to be controlled by the hand and the new bone (the one that will control its rotation) at the same time.

I first create the new bone and join it to the main armature by selecting both and pressing Ctrl + J, right? That works fine, the new bone now seems to be part of the main armature.

Now, parenting with automatic weights won’t work (I get the typical “Bone Heat Weight” error) and if I choose to parent to bone, I can only do it with one bone, and not both.

How can I go about it?

4

Yes, you can join a bone to Armature by pressing Ctrl + J, but usually it’s convenient to use Duplicate or Add bones from left menu in Armature Edit mode like here http://joxi.ru/XEA4kPpCBODJ2b .
This is a good tutorial by DanPro how to do clear parenting to separate bones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HTYz-bVdU Perhaps, this will help?