Constraints

Constraints are common to any animation program, and I have used various types of constraints in multiple studies to pin parts of a character's body to another object, vice versa, and/or alter animation data as necessary.

For this particular example, I wanted to set up a small system of parent constraints to have a character properly hold a gun with two hands, while still being able to gesture with one hand freely.

After taking the character and repositioning one hand to properly hold the gun, the first of three parent constraints was established, parenting the gun to the right hand of the soldier.

 

A null was added into the scene, and parented to the gun so that the left hand of the soldier would have an object I could parent it to.

After repositioning the left hand and fingers, and making sure the translational and rotational reach on the left hand controller were both set to 100, the third and final parent constraint was applied to the left hand, snapping it to the null that is attached to the gun.

 Lastly, for any scenario where the left hand needed to be free of the constraint, it was a simple matter of changing the weight of the constraint to zero, and keying the weight at the proper time frame.