Parenting on keyframe? (or something similar)

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’ll jump right in to it:

I want to use a hand to move to and pick up an object, move it and later drop it at another location.

How do I do this without having to constantly align the objects every frame?

I asked on several IRC channels and came back with “look into vertex parenting” but that doesn’t seem to help at all.

In the example files for 2.40 there is an example that does exactly what I want, is there a tutorial on how to do this? (the file is driven_hand.blend)

2

Well, have you tried once you bring the hand down to the object and have them both where you want the, parnting the hand to the ball?

3

Try searching the forums for this - there was a thread a while ago about a crane lifting something.
Otherwise, I’d say changing the effect of parenting the ball to the hand with an IPO would be your best bet.

4

Unfortunately you can’t keyframe child/parent relationships. There are 2 ways to do this:

  1. use a Copy Location on the PickedUp obj and make a hand Bone the Target. You can KeyFrame the INF(luence) in the Constraints menu in the IPO window (in 2.40 I think you can key it from the constraint tab with the Show and Key buttons). This will override your Keyframes from the PickedUp position to the PutDown position.

  2. use 3 duplicate objects, one in the PickUp position, one VertexParented to the hand and the last in the PutDown position. Put the Parented and the PutDown objs on a hidden layer and keyframe the approach of the hand. At the frame that the picking up begins key the PickUp obj to a hidden layer and the Parented obj to a visible layer. Key to the PutDown position and hide the Parented obj and reveal the PutDown obj.

%<

5

Thanks for the reactions! Quinny and I are working at a school animation project. I’m going to try the things you desribe… :slight_smile: