Keying Parenting?
 

Hello. A hopefully easy question from a complete newbie. I don't know how to ask it so I'll just give an example:

I want to have an arrow (as in bow and arrow) move straight then get stuck in a character model. How do I make it so the arrow can move straight and then move with the model stuck in place?

It seems like I could do it if I could keyframe the parentage of an object (the arrow) so that first it's not parented to anything, and then it is parented to the character, but I don't know what I'm doing, so I may be totally wrong.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

take a look at the constraints... can't remember what kind you need (cause off the top of my head i can't remember what does what), but aim and orient sound good *shrug*

what you want is a parent constraint. you can then key an attribute in the constraint on and off (it actually has a floating number so that when you have the object parented to two objects, you can actually have it slid between the two instead of snapping back and forth).

For example, Create a sphere and a plane. select the sphere, then shift select the plane. In your animation set, select constrain > parent. move the sphere around, the plane follows with it. now select the plane. Under SHAPES, you should see " pPlane1_parentConstraint1 ". If you select that, a few attributes become visible, the bottom one should be "P Sphere1 WO", it is this attribute that you can animate to turn the parenting on and off. the name of this attribute will typically be the <name of the parent> WO

hope this helps

that's the constraint i was thinkin' of!

Point constraint will make the child mimic the translates of the parent

Orient constraint will make the child mimic the Rotation of the parent

Parent constraint will make the child mimic the both Rotate and translates of the parent.

Scale is scale

And aim is the only real tricky one, It orients the child so that one of it's axis (determined when creating the constraint) is always pointing directly at the parent (a good example is an eye controller, so the eyes always look at there the controller is positioned)

trick with constraints is that the selection is backwards, Parent first, then child, while normal parenting is child, then parent.

Thanks guys. I give that a try Kratch, it certainly sounds like what I'm asking for.

Thanks again!