Animating a character with props.
 

Hello all.

I'm hoping someone can give me an answer to this. Wasn't sure which thread to put this into. Animation, rigging, so I decided it needs to go into the basics thread. Hope that's correct!

I have a human character walking into a scene carrying a briefcase. He walks up to a table and puts the briefcase onto the table, lets it go and walks to the other side of the room.

What I need to know from anyone here, is there a simple way to attach/unattach the briefcase to my characters hand while he walks in, and get it to let go when he places it onto the table.

I guess this question will apply to any prop that needs to be held/released by the character, such as a TV remote control, beer bottle etc.

I just can't figure out a simple way to do it.

Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Chesticles. :)

you can solve this using constraints(point and orient constraints).
i don't have much time just know so if you google it or press f1 when in maya and search for constraints(specificly point and orient constraints).
good luck

Thanks for that. Will F1 away now I see it falls under the constraint area.

That has narrowed the field somewhat!

hi man here's a link that someone else on this forum gave to me when i got stuck with constraints:

http://www.jonathanrnelson.com/tutor...p_tutorial.htm


good luck man:beer: