Bone parenting

[da2tha3]

I'm wondering if a future possible addition is editing of bone parenting through the timeline. For example, I want a character to pick up a piece of paper from on top of a desk. On frame one, the paper's bone would be parented to the desk's done. On frame 10, the character's hand is over the paper, ready to pick it up. At this point, I would want to parent the paper bone to the hand bone.

At present, bone parenting is editable later in the timeline, and I'm not sure how this could be added.

A suggestion is parent constraints, as in 3D apps, in this, a constraint controls what is parented to what, with editable values from 0 to 1.

I assume, however, that Anime references bone locations in it's local axis, and when parenting is switched, the position attributes would automatically change? I'm not clued up on the difficulties of programming such funcionality, but it would be nice to have the option to switch bones as such.

[dueyftw]

One quick way is to have duplicate layers. One hidden one not. Each layer has it own parent. Then you reverse the one that is hidden and the one that is not.

So two papers. one hidden, parented to the character's hand (hidden) the other parented to the desk (shown). At frame 10, paper parented to the character's hand (shown), paper parented to the desk (hidden).

Dale

[da2tha3]

Thanks. I do realise this is one option, but it means matching up the points on a switchover frame, and in more complex operations where this scenario could arise, it causes quite a reasonable amount of confusion. Maybe there are other ways around it using the current setup, but I was hoping there'd be some future way to modify bone parenting alone the timeline. As said though, I'm not sure how complex a task that is when it comes to programming, since translational properties would be adjusted in relation to their parent bones.

I'm just looking for the easiest solution to what at times is a nagging problem, but maybe your suggestion is the only appropriate solution.