poser question: How do I lock a figureshands into place on an object. Example 1: I want to have a figure walking in place on a treadmill. How do I lock the handparts onto the treadmill hand bar, so that when I apply a walking motion from the walk designer, the legs and body will move but the hand parts stay stationary?? Exam[ple 2: I have a guy standing with a sword in his both hands. How do I lock the handparts to the sword handle ,so that when I pull the sword, the arms and hands move locked to the sword. Example 3: I have a figure with a rifle in both hands. How do I lock the hands to the rifle so that when I move the riflr, both hands move with the rifle in place. Any help would be deeply appreciated. Keith kbyrne@easynews.com

The only one I can help you with is your 2nd example... To keep the sword and hand together, you parent the sword to the hand, not the other way around. Position the sword into the hand in the starting position and then (with the sword prop)selected, click the menu bar at Object then go to Change Parent (there are a multitude of ways to do this step, this is just my preference) and then click the hand you want the object parented to. I haven't any idea how to parent and object to both hands and would LOVE to know how. I do images with 2-handed weapons and it is a pain in the neck to get the other hand into place at times.

Wanted to do something similar to example 1 myself - actually a figure pushing a trolley, basically the same problem though, just with a walk path - tediously long winded way I got round it as follows: 1 Apply walk to figure. 2 Open keyframe editor and delete all keyframes for collarbones, shoulders and forearms. 3 Go to frame 1 and place the hands as required. 4 Select left hand, choose Edit>Copy. 5 Cycle through all keyframes, using Step Forward, then Edit>Paste. 6 Repeat steps 4 and 5 with the right hand. Boring and repetitive, but it works!

Oops, forgot to mention... ...I think you need to turn on Use Inverse Kinematics, for both arms, otherwise it will distort the hell out of the collars!

If you turn IK on for the arms, you can then parent each hand to the rifle/sword etc and by moving the weapon the arms shoiuld move with it.