changing parenting of animated objects

I am working on an animation where a character must pull a gun from a holster attached to the vehicle he is riding on. The holster is parented to the vehicle. The gun has a child of constraint on its armature/bone. The gun’s bone also has a child of constraint targeting the hand bone so that I can switch over control at the right point. However… when I do this and the Hand takes control, the guns shoots way off screen. Does anyone know why this may be happening? I’m thinking it’s is an error in the way they are pa rented. Any help would be much appreciated. I’d post a blend but I’m away from the project right now. Thanks.

Hi man,
I also had issues with this kind of thing, until I found this: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Animation/Dynamic_Parent

it hasn’t been maintained in quite a while, but I recently tested it in blender 2.71, and it seems to be working fine most of the time.

there’s also a demo video that you can check out.

hope this helps.

cheers,
G :smiley:

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You can have 2 child of constraints, for 2 different objects. Just keyframe the influence to swap from one to the other. Interpolation can be set to constant so its like a switch.

Thanks to you both for responding. I’ll check out the link and see what I can learn. I did try using two child of constraints at first but didn’t change the mode. I may revisit that option. Hopefully I’ll have a rough render I can share before long. It’s part of Larger project but it would be helpful to get feedback at this stage. Thx again.

http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?304537-How-to-pick-up-AND-set-down-an-object-using-Child-Of-Constraint&p=2448918&viewfull=1#post2448918

There really should be a FAQ with all these recurring questions ! Or a sticky post ?

Yeah… it would be nice to have a standard reference to go to when trying to learn how to do basic tasks with animating characters. Problem is that blender changes so fast that the next release may not work the same way. Now if a standard workflow could be established and the developers work within that framework it would be great. But then we would be paying for that level of organization and blender would no longer be free. … the double edged sword of open source apps I suppose. I think I would rather struggle with things the way they are. @hadriscus: thanks for the link to the thread. I’ll try some of those techniques and see if I can get it to work for me.

Welcome, eventually it is just one technique, explained in the very post I linked you to : visual keying and keying constraint’s influence. This has been working this way forever so you can bury it deep in your mind, I don’t think it’s likely to change anytime soon. :wink:

Well, that just shows how little I know about what I’m doing. :slight_smile: It’s good to know it’s something I can latch onto…once I understand it properly. Thanks again.

Finally got it working the way I envisioned it. Basically followed the steps outlined in your link hadriscus. It helped too to make a quick scene using the constraints with primitive shapes just trying to get the behavior nailed down. Thx to all!