Setting up Constraints in Maya

In this clip from the Animation Tips in Maya course on Pluralsight, learn how to setup an animator friendly constraint, for constraining an object to a hand, or vise versa.
www.pluralsight.com/courses/m...

[@XxBloodyWenchxX]

ohhh i love you. that tutorial is just so considerate and informative. it's just amazing to learn about really REALLY precious shortcuts (ctrl+i) on the side, while having someone explain to you slowly and clearly about the complex interconnection possibilities of maya. beautiful. i wish i could send you flowers :D

[@Frankyding90]

I'm going to start animating 3D in Maya again after over a 3 year long break! This was a nice little tutorial for getting back into some basic concepts in the software. I personally found this tutorial very helpful. You have a nice teaching voice (Trust me, that's important in these dusty subjects xD) and very calm and thorough way of explaining the process and what the locators, etc. are useful for. Thank you very much! And good luck with all your projects :)

[@eshan309]

omg, i always directly used parent constraint on the obj. (hand ctrl as parent and obj as child). This is extremely helpful! Thank you so much!

[@jobsonchelsea6434]

Thank you so much for the constraints tuts! it saved me a lot!

[@raghavrao905]

That's a really sweet character!!

[@forzamaya4087]

The best parents constrain tutorial I've ever seen on KZbin,

[@vivvygipe9605]

Thank you for this tutorial! It was both useful and easily understandable, so kudos to you!

[@natecullamar]

Thank you for this tutorial - its clear and easy!

[@Frame16Gaming]

Thank you for the example of the cup to. hand. Exactly what I was trying to think out in my head.

[@WickedSlum]

Really nice video dude. Don't stop uploading

[@Tyler-zb6ec]

Great tut!! Helped me a ton

[@kinnetikira]

Love your character and your animation :D

[@Hbhnudeh743]

Thank you very much for the tutorial!

[@bruhtuuhtuhtaaa]

YOU ARE AMAZING! Thank you very much!!

[@CharkieG]

You fixed my issue, thank you!

[@zelbahrawy2004]

That was very useful, thanks very much.

[@xavierchen9135]

easy and clear! thanks

[@longsocksnick4525]

Very good video !:) quite helpful

[@kotariram2850]

good work buddy..pls upload more animation tutorials to become easy to the animator's..thank u very much.

[@havydirtysoul]

really helpful, thanks!

[@wondertv1356]

it's really helpful~!

[@harryjagwar6819]

can you constrain maya to the bin

[@krunoslavpecatnik2357]

thank you :D

[@cerbus6597]

I use IK FK Switch and what i do is create a locator THEN group it solo, so that i can move the Group File so that the Locator stays 0 then i parent the object in the locator instead then parent constraint the Group Locator to the hand joint. there i can change IK to FK and it still works

[@Saeklovesdrawing]

Thank you.

[@phixix]

Parent constrain from the locator to the wrist joint doesn't work for me. No Rhyme or reason why.

[@iiAnferny]

@Raveepast Tuntisitthikorn I think there's a difference when parenting to joints when theyre in IK / FK. Just switched one of the arms back to FK and it seemed to work. But idk if this is always the case

[@paolaabril9250]

me neither... it is marked as an error, it doesn't allow me to do it that way but the other way around :( ... what that happens?.. but it allows me to do it to another thing hahah... not to the character :( but another object

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

The error might come if destination or the mesh is locked, so unlock it.

[@madsahren2208]

wouldnt it be easier to match transformations the locator to the position of the hilt instead of eyeballing it? and then adjust from there?

[@gRepsold]

Where can I get/buy that rig? Looks really good.

[@vazak11]

Cool!

[@rexter4878]

omg!!! i need this rig.

[@kevinmwambi1621]

where can i get that character

[@majupiju2347]

I newly subbed to your channel and stumbled over this nice video :) I know its old but if you down mind I would like to add some useful information to it ;D at least from my view. Isn't it better to make the Hand the leader and not the sword? Since you want the sword to follow the IK and the FK hands. So make the main hand lead the sword and the sword lead the offhand. Little pro tip: use the "match Transformation" function to directly get the selected object to the desired object's pivot. You can align translation and rotation. Also very useful is this script (Python) to parents a locator to a selected object and match its translation and rotation and rename it accordingly: #create locator at control as child import maya.cmds as cmds curSel=cmds.ls(selection=True) print curSel if curSel: for i in range(len(curSel)): endLoc = cmds.spaceLocator(name=curSel[i] + "_loc") cmds.matchTransform(endLoc, curSel[i], pos=True, rot=True) cmds.parent(endLoc, curSel[i], relative=False)

[@Amirikl1]

Thank you for the script! I came here to say: "In Parent Constraint Options just uncheck 'Maintain Offset" and hit 'Apply'. so the child would be aligned perfectly with a pivot of the parent", so I came across your pro tip with a cool present inside. Cheers!

[@PlusHappylab]

Whats the difference between parent and parent constraint

[@venomsnake_kh]

And if I have an axe and I want to throw it, I just desactivate the blend parent and animate it??

[@lawrence9713]

shouldnt the sword follow the hand?

[@felipebuenno94]

Somebody know if Unity Engine recognize this method? Creating my keyframes in sword only, the hand no have problem later?

[@dimensionalartist3562]

I don't think unity understands constraints... you might need to bake animation into joints.

[@madsahren2208]

before you leave maya just make sure to bake the animation onto the hands!

[@ZzigZaG00NIN]

:o

[@matthenlein3673]

Does this not work with referenced characters/objects? I cannot for the life of my get this to work :( Just says Error: line 0 : could not add constraint of connections. Please help!

[@bikotheanimator6169]

Precisely. I am trying to attach a staff to Aang's hand, but I can't remember how I did it for the August AnimChallenge in 2020. This is the main problem with most of the tutorials on youtube. They are directly using parent constraints on surface models rather than using a rigged object such as a sword or staff. It really does not help.

[@bikotheanimator6169]

I figured out the solution. I did the part he said about using a normal parent first with the locator and the object, but I think I used one of the main nurbs curve controls. Next, I selected the locator and shift selected the hand control, and I press parent constraint. What I am going to do next is put the hand control on a separate layer and lock it, and hide it, because it has blue channels. Now I should be able to animate the locator and the staff main nurbs control without getting green channels.

[@matthenlein3673]

@@bikotheanimator6169 Thanks I'll give it a try! :)

[@bikotheanimator6169]

The problem with most of these tutorials is they don't show how to parent constraint using an actually rigged sword or staff asset. They are only doing it straight to the model. I hate rigging.

[@joshbeltran865]

Yeah I'm having this problem right now too. I ended up constraining the locator to the controller for the rigged prop. I'm not sure if this is a good idea though...