if you used the parent constraint it could be why your having issues. To create a heirachy in maya like the select and link tool in max:

1.select the child then shift select the parent,
2.press the p key to parent them or go to edit>parent.
3.shift+p unparents the objects.

If thats what you did and its still causing animation errors try just setting keys for the translate and rotation values.
shift+w, and shift+e sets keys for the individual transforms. as does right clicking them in the attribute editor and choosing set key.

If you are using constraints its the other way around:

1. select the constraining object
2. shift select the object to be constrained.
3. add a constraint from the constraints menu

but i wouldnt recommend using the parent constraint except in specific rigging situations.

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Tyson, you're a legend. Cheers.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

no worries dude . Heres a question, I've just got an upgraded machine at work with some pretty serious hardware inside. its running dual xeon quad cores with a quaddro fx 4800 card, for some reason they installed windows xp 64 bit edition which I havent heard many good things about, anyway, with all this supercharged hardware I'm not getting very much noticable improvement in maya, rendering is faster but general performance isnt perceptively different than my old geforce 7800 card. Ive installed the latest nvidia drivers and set the nvidia settings to the "autodesk maya" preset. I don't know what else to try and I'm not sure if there are any preferences inside maya that might suddenly open the floodgates to performance bliss. any ideas?

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I've heard quaddros are not really worth it. I think you can unlock the geforce series cards to behave like quaddros and the gaming cards have better performance anyway, but I'll defer to ATG for this one.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

ive read similar things about the current crop of video cards, the major difference is the open gl support and the massive difference in frame buffer 1.5gig for the 4800 quadro. but I was expecting more obvious improvements in the maya viewports. I tried max with the new machine today and it totally flies. I think theres just ways of working in maya that you need to get used to. things are quite a bit slower like opening the hypershade for instance. I thought that it would improve with a decent workstation machine but it seems to be pretty much the same deal. If anyone has any advice on the subject I'd be interested to hear it.

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Got xp sp2?

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Yeah, got it.

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for character animation when i have to parent a prop to characters hand i set it up like so:
< = parented too

constrainGROUP
< moveGROUP
< propMESH

the prop is grouped to itself (ctrl g) twice and renamed as something similar to the above.

then the constrainGROUP is parent constrained to the characters hand. By setting it up like this you can have one group constrained to follow a characters hand and a separate group as its child to move around as you wish.

if you ever need to turn of the constraint you can easily key it and set it to zero. you could go one step further and create a nurbs control for the moveGROUP with a custom attribute set up to control it and turn of the constraint to keep everything clean.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

That makes alot of sense actually.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

yeah, I had to read it through about 3 times until it clicked what you were saying, a usefull tip to be sure, there is so much to learn about rigging in maya that sometimes it feels like finding out you have a high midichlorian count and its time to enrol in a jedi course....or something. exciting frustrating and intimidating I for one would be really really interested in reading a list of all the best little rigging discoveries you have had matt.

One thing I keep doing when I rig my character's hands is find that I have messed up the local/gimbal rotations and I get horrible stuff happening when I start animating. Do you have any advise on setting it up right to avoid gimbal lock? I think I understand that you are supposed to change the rotation order to better match the local and gimbal rotations but I just keep repeating the mistake.

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it may be a little confusing but i find rigging is very difficult to explain to explain using just text. I should just post a screenshot of a hierarchy or something. hope it makes sense now its a really good way to rig up props. if you have a query let me know

i may make a list of rigging discoveries, i'll a have a little think and see what i have learnt theres so much though

as to your query about gimbal lock. its not an issue really for IK, but for any fk arm joint chains (the bound joint chain too if you have an IK FK blend) you have in your setup you should change the rotation order from xyz to yzx. that option is under the joint attributes and should go a long way in solving many gimbal lock issues.

i've also heard of animators working in gimbal rotation mode so they do not run into those issues.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

no your explanation was fine it just takes me a few read throughs. I find things so much easier to understand visually just as its easier to explain them that way I guess. I just read and watched a bit about
the problem. here: [Link to thinkanimation.blogspot.com]

and I think I get it, I just have to get it working a few times in practice. Today I rigged this hula girl character at work and found that when I started animating the wrists started going weird with gimbal lock, I had pretty much finished the whole thing so I just tried to fudge it and animated the hands in gimbal mode. its not ideal but I got it working for this little project, next time I will make sure i nail it. I think the rule of thumb is this, (for my benefit as much as anyone elses, I'll write it down here)

Rotation order is like a hierarchy from left to right.
XYZ where Z is the parent. the axis follow each other and behave like objects in a hierarchy.
To avoid gimbal lock in this hierarchy of axis
the primary or most used rotational axis should be the last axis, followed by the first
and the least important is the middle axis.

so in my wrist setup with x facing down toward the fingers y (up) rotates side to side and z is up and down
the rotation order should be YXZ. does that sound right?

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honestly i think you have a better understanding of gimbal lock than i do, but your explanation seems to be correct. though it took a little bit of playing in maya to fully grasp it.

i dont run into gimbal lock that often but i also dont do anything really special when i rig up the wrists/ arms. i'm fairly meticulous in making sure that all the joints are oriented correctly as are any ik handles and ik controls. you could send me a quick arm setup and could try and break it.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

Yeah, I think I'm just a bit confused when it comes to getting things aligned properly in maya I usually kind of just go for it and hope for the best but its real easy to make mistakes that way. On monday I'll go back and try to fix the problem just so I can put it to rest in my head, but if its still all tricky I'll send you a copy to take a look at for sure.

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