Put a prop in a hand without the hand bone distorting it?

[mooncaine]

Believe me, I've searched various ways for almost an hour. I can't see how to put a walkie talkie, or a phone, in the hand of a character that has an arm and hand with bones in it.... and yet prevent the phone or radio from being deformed.

I am betting this is a frequently asked question, but I can't find it. There may be more than one way. Just pointers to threads, or portions of the Help, that teach this, would be helpful.

I'm trying to keep the wrist flexible, using a hand bone to move the hand, and yet keep a phone in the hand, and keep it from distorting.

[darkmatter]

Hi mooncaine. That's simple, just draw the phone on another layer That way, it won't get affected.

[heyvern]

Put the object on another layer. Bind the layer to and extra child bone of the hand bone.

If you need the object to be picked up and put down then duplicate the held object layer.

One of the duplicate layers is bound to the extra hand bone the other isn't.

The extra bone that is a child of the hand is used to change the orientation of the object as needed. I use this bone to rotate the hand held object to line up with the object layer that isn't bound to any bone.

So for instance a character walks to a table to pick up a phone. As he is walking the phone layer bound to the hand is set to be invisible and the phone on the table is visible.

He reaches for the phone and at the frame where he picks it up you orient the bone controlling the phone layer to match the phone on the table. It doesn't have to be precise because it will move on the next frame anyway.

You then "switch" the invisibility of each layer. Magically the unbound phone layer on the table "becomes" the bound phone layer in the hand. Seamless.

Here is an example from a similar question:
(this example does not have the "extra" hand bone since it wasn't needed for the object)

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/swordhand.mov
http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/swordhand.moho

-vern

[mooncaine]

Ah, an extra bone. Thanks! I had tried the separate layer thing, btw, darkmatter. Nope, it was definitely affected.

A group bound to the bone seems to work, but there's a bug where binding a Switch layer doesn't seem to work... until I save, and re-open, the file.

The extra bone tip might be essentially the same thing as using a group layer, but if you say bone layer, I go with that. Thanks!

[heyvern]

If you have a hand bone in the main skeleton you add a child bone from the hand bone.

This "extra" bone is in the main skeleton along with everything else. Make sure this bone doesn't have any strength and doesn't effect any of the layers or mesh.

I've found this technique works perfectly for anything that needs to be picked up or held.

It works for switch layers as well. However you don't need the extra bone in the main skeleton if you use a switch layer. Just add the extra bone in the switch (switches can have bones).

If you want put the object layer in its own bone layer and put the "extra" bone there as well instead of the main skeleton.

The reason I like to put the extra bone in the main skeleton is so I can animate it simply when animating everything else.

-vern

[mooncaine]

Thanks. Good stuff, good stuff.