I have an alien firemage salamander (nice). I have a little ray gun. (adorable) Trying to parent ray gun to his right hand. Should be easy, yes? NO!!! When I parent the gun to the hand, it moves. I can reposition it, somewhat, but it becomes really difficult as the rotate coordinates seem to rotate in a circle around the hand, not the gun itself.

I know it's me, but what am I doing wrong....this time?

You might try taking a small primitive sphere (the size of a marble in scale), parent the prop gun to the sphere and parent the sphere to the hand. Center the sphere for the correct axis of rotation. You then use the sphere as a handle for adjusting the gun. set the sphere to non-rendering so it doesn't show up when you render.

-K

Genius! I hope that works. Weird thing about the gun is it deforms as it rotates when parented to the hand. I'll try the ball thing.

Sadly did not work. As soon as i parented the ray gun to the ball primitive it distorted. I think I'll just try another gun. It's either the gun or the model...or me.

Weirdly, a different ray gun worked without any problem. Thanks anyway.

Sounds like there might be some odd behavior with the first gun prop. Glad you got it sorted with a different prop. You might have a corrupt .obj/.obz in the first one....

-K

Thanks! Never happened before, so there is something funky with it. Fortunately, I purchased several ray guns. pew pew!

It's probably the joint center for the first ray gun that is off. Load ray gun and open joint editor, place green crosshair in middle of ray gun.

Thank you, I'll try that. You can't have too many ray guns.

Another thing to try if/when an object starts to act weird when you try to position it is to use the Direct Manipulation Tool. An unfortunately lugubrious name but it's useful for getting around gimbal lock.

Thanks! I've never even used that tool. I'll be needing a lot of ray guns in my sci fi saga so I'll have to put that weird one back in service.