How do I detach an object from a character's hand?

[JumboCracky]

I hope I'm not posting a file that's too inappropriate for this forum.

So I've been wanting to be able to make a character "let go" of a held object. In this instance, I've created a scene where one character kicks a weapon out of another character's hand and the weapon should be sent flying and falling to the ground, but the way I made the second character hold on to the weapon in the first place was by binding the layer of the weapon to the hand bone. But it seems as though unbinding isn't really possible in the middle of the animation.

What method can I use to make the object not always get gripped on?

This is the part that makes me stumped:


And then the file is here for anyone to understand what I'm talking about (The specific event starts after frame 324):
http://www.mediafire.com/download/wy844 ... glued.anme

[Greenlaw]

The easiest way is a 'sleight of hand' trick:

First duplicate the gun layer and unparent the duplicate from the character. Next, hide the duplicate gun layer until the frame where the gun is kicked away. You can keyframe the visibility or the opacity of the layer to make this happen. Alternatively, you can just keep the second gun off-camera and just 'snap' it into position when it gets kicked; you might even just keyframe a mask--obviously, there are lot of ways to do this.

On the frame where the unparented duplicate gun becomes visible, you will naturally just hide the original gun in the character's hand, and then animate the second gun flying away.

Also, you should use Step Interpolation to hide and reveal the layers (regardless of the method you choose)--this will snap the visibility on and off suddenly. Just remember to switch back to Smooth mode for the gun animation.

Hope this helps.

[JumboCracky]

I'm not sure if I properly followed your steps, but I think I managed to make a visual appearance of the gun being kicked out the hand. Thanks for your help.