Releasing a layer from a bone during animation?

[Reindeer]

Is there a way to release a Layer from a bone only at a given point in an animation?
I have a person carrying a vase of flowers. The vase is parented to the character's hand bone, so it will follow his movement while he walks. At a certain point I want him to put the vase on a table and walk away. So, I'd like to free the vase from the hand bone, but of course if I do so it will release it also during previous frames.
I've solved the problem by adding a copy layer with the vase (outside of the character's bone layer) and turning off the visibility of the vase in his hand so that it looks like he's depositing it, but I'm just wondering if there's a way to do this differently.

[slowtiger]

The visibility switch is the way to do here.

[Reindeer]

Thanks. Sometimes it's comforting to know there's only one option

[funksmaname]

You can keyframe bone parenting (I think this was introduced in 10 or 11) - if you use the re-parent tool off frame 0 it will be keyframed.

[Reindeer]

I'm afraid I used a wrong terminology, my bad.
I meant the vase is bound to the bone, not parented. So I was actually asking if I can keyframe an un-binding.
But if you say I can unparent, maybe I could give the vase a bone of its own, parent it and the unparent it. I'll try that.

[funksmaname]

But if you say I can unparent, maybe I could give the vase a bone of its own, parent it and the unparent it. I'll try that.

Precisely

[Reindeer]

Woah, that worked really well! I added a bone to the vase, parented that bone to the hand bone and unparented it when the character puts the vase down. Bingo, the vase stays put. Nice!
Now I've got to solve how to prevent the vase from following the character's path after he walks away again (even if unparented it still has to obey the layer's path, don't think there's a way to exclude that). But it still looks better than it did, the actual putting down of the vase now looks very natural because the visibility is turned off only after the character's arms are completely out of the way.

[Greenlaw]

Be careful not to overthink it. Just swap the visibility with a duplicate vase that exists outside the rig and isn't parented.

[funksmaname]

If the vase is in its own layer, it won't move away with the body once unparented... You probably want to set up a 'main bone' for moving the rig around, rather than using layer translation anyway?

I think swapping visibility is more complicated - location has to be matched, and editing later becomes more problematic - if the tools are there, use 'em imho!

[Greenlaw]

I guess is depends on the action.

For me, swapping duplicate objects for something released by a character has often been the first 'go to' solution in 3D and 2D animation. It's just simpler to have two separate objects to animate if their parting motion is going to be independent anyway. I don't think lining up the items at the point of release is really all that difficult, especially in 2D but, yes, you do want to save that part for last if you're still animating the character.

[synthsin75]

If the vase is in its own layer, it won't move away with the body once unparented... You probably want to set up a 'main bone' for moving the rig around, rather than using layer translation anyway?

Yeah, I always find it easier to sync root bone translation, in things like walk cycles, instead of layer translation. I typically use layer transforms as a very gross motion or last pass sort of thing.

[Reindeer]

Interesting, funksmaname. The present character, though, actually has a main bone which is varying the height of his hip while he walks. Problem is, if now I use the main bone it to traslate him it's going to impact on his walk cycle because he also has target bones on his feet which pin him to the ground. I guess this would easily work if the main bone had no other purpose than to traslate the character (as in the flight of a bird or insect).

I'd need a 'special' bone which could exclude only certain other bones from the chain (namely, in this case, the targets)

I can see what Greenlaw means with 'overthinking' .... on the other hand this solution of unparenting just allowed me to animate the depositing of the vase very nicely. I still used the visibility thing, but with the unparenting it can kick in when che character's arms and hands are nice and clear of the object.

[funksmaname]

using a parent bone for rig translation is the same as using the layer position (but has some benefits imo) - only difference in your particular case is that I assume you already created your walk (in place) and moved the body across to where it needs to go (with layer translation) so yes, you would have to re-sync your walk.

However, I think doing it with the control bone method, and actually moving the feet in space rather than in place can really help with floaty walks. Translating the rig across a distance at a particular pace will dictate who wide or fast the steps have to be to actually get him across that distance. If you just do a generic walk, then translate the whole layer, the two are somewhat disconnected and if they are in any way out of sync you will get floatyness (you might want to do this if you are ice skating, but not walking/running)

[synthsin75]

You can also add a parent bone to your rise/fall root bone to handle translation.

[funksmaname]

yeah, just that translating that still means he has to re-do the walk... good practice though