I recently started modelling a character. The modelling of the character is over.

One special thing about my character is that he always has a mace like thing in his hand.

After i finished modelling, i went for the skeleton.Now my question is that, is it necessary that there should be skeleton to the staff or mace or should it is parented to the model in order to achieve a good and fluent animation.

Use a parent constraint so you have the option of turning it off. That way, you can animate your model picking up or putting down the mace...

Remember; a parent constraint is different than parenting. Parenting adds the child to the heirarchy and it stays there. With a parent constraint, the child is not part of the parents heirarchy. It is simply attached to it plus you can turn off the constriant by choosing the object then go to the attribute editor and look at the inputs. You will see the constraint. I can't remember the actual name of the attribute but it will be set to 1 if the constraint is on and if you set it to 0 then the constraint will be off. You can keyframe the constraint value..

U have mentioned about the parent constraint.

Can u tell me about its other applications.

Well, you can set up a parent constraint with more than one parent. Example: you could parent contraint the mace to a character's hand so that it stays there but you can also parent constraint it to another character's hand at the same time. You turn the constraint on for the character who is holding the mace and turn it off for the guy who isn't holding it. Now, you can have the first character hand the mace to the other character or set it on the table then have the other character pick it up. You do this by simply switching the constaint on and off for each of the characters. The reason this works without having the mace snap when switching constraints is because the parent constraint maintains the childs position just like when you use parenting.

If you have a sphere located at 0,0,0 (x,y,z)and another sphere located at 2,0,0 and you use the orient constraint and the point constraint with the 2 spheres instead of parenting them, the constrained sphere (the child) will keep its own pivot point centered within itself. So, if you rotate the "parent", the "child" will also rotate but it will rotate from its own pivot point rather than from the center point of the parent. Also, if you move the child around by translating or rotating it, then move the parent, the child will snap back to its position before you moved it.

If parenting the two spheres together, the child will move as you move the parent but it will also keep it's original relationship to the parent. In other words, the parent will guide the child around (like a parent holding a childs hand). It's ok for you to move the child around without the parent because when you move the parent, the child will always follow from its current position. It will not snap back like it will when using a point/orient constraint.

Well, the Parent constraint is just like parenting except that you can hook up more than one of them and you can turn them on and off.

It will make more sense if you sit down and play with Parenting, parenting constraint, and also point and orient constraints.

dont know whether it'll help but there's a free vid on digital tutors on parent constraining:
https://www.digitaltutors.com/digital...ideo.php?v=546
(click the 'show free video' button after the ufo advert finishes).

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thank u `velusion` for giving me such a good explanation. First i have gone through the help to find out any applications if possible i could get only the usage but not the applications. Thank you very much.

For tckl1 ur link is very good.thank u.