Basketball Animation Problem

[jvanimatior]

Hey,

I am animating a basketball dunk scene using the Andy rig and I ran into hopefully a small problem.  I could not
figure out how to constraint the ball to both hands without Maya calculating the weight differnce. 

I successfully parent contsraint the ball to one arm but failed when contstraing both, I just dont want to have to animate one arm frame by frame.

I would really appreciate it if you guys can help me out.  I have a link to the video, Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JvAnimations?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/JRoOy-npXZA

[giantlizard]

You could constrain the second hand to the ball instead of trying to constrain the ball to both hands.
example:
- constrain ball to right hand
- constrain left hand to ball
- animate right hand and the rest will follow.

cheers, gl

[jvanimatior]

Thanks gl,

It seems to work when the arms are in Ik, but when I switch it to Fk I am not able to constraint the ball to the hand.  I wonder if there is another way.....(I usually animate arms using FK)

I seem to run into a problem when the left hand follows the ball is there a way for me to continue to keframe the left hand without messing/up with the constraint?

Thanks again,

jvanimator

[giantlizard]

hi jvanimator,
animating arms using FK would be my choice too.

I did not try out the Andy rig so I do not know if it is possible to switch one arm to FK and the other arm to IK. If it is possible you could try this:
- switch right hand to FK (for animation)
- find a way to constrain or parent the ball to the right hand (for example find the FK wrist joint in the hirarchie and parent the ball to it)
- switch the left hand to IK
- parent or constrain the left hand to the ball
- animate the right hand using FK and the rest should follow

If that doesn't help, I'll try out the Andy rig.
good luck!
gl

[jvanimatior]

Hi Gl,

(The Andy rig comes with a script that lets the user to swtich from fk to ik vice versa)

The main problem I run into is when the ball is the parent to the left hand, it follows the right hand fairly well for the most part but it's when I want to keyfram the left hand, thats when it messes with the constraint and the channel box is then highlighted in green. Is there a way around it? (maybe using a null?)  Thank you for yout time.

jvanimator