A basic question about using child relations and hidden objects (workflow)

Hi,

often I have the problem that object needs to be moved to together for some movements and later they need to be independent.

For example a grab takes a screw 1 and move it from point A to point B and at B the screw is screw done (down+rotate) and stay there. Now the grab moves up and goes to a new place.

At the moment I use the screw as a child of the grab, since I want to be sure that the screw follow the movement of the grab with all details (adjusted curve with smooth movement). At the start and end position I hide the child screw and show a duplicated version.

Is this a good workflow?

-Micha

In my opinion: perfect workflow.

Luc

OK, so, maybe something for the future - it could be nice if temporary objects could follow other objects. Like the weight parameter for animating with curves it could be great to blend between “own” keyframes and the keyframes of an other object.

I don’t know anything about other animations software but I think there could be a more elegant solution. My solution looks more like a workaround. :wink:

Yes Micha, I know the feeling.

But I personally don’t see how to administrate such. E.g is the ‘switch’ to be found in the keyframes of the parent or the keyframes of the child? Moreover a complex variety of situations can occur. Being child of a parent is in some applications (Forward and invers Kinematics) an attribute that, when switched off, disturbs the entire chain. Would a switchable hierarchical link imply that a child can have various parents; e.g. a screw first picked up by arm A, work independent and then taken over by arm B. Etc…

So probably the trick with the stand-in object is by far the simplest.
I’ve put your thoughts on the long term wish list: https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/BO-3326

Luc

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