Is there any way to edit an aniamted pose file to unparent a prop from a figure at a specific point in the animation? Heres the setup. Have michael 3 running with rifle. Rifle is parented to his right hand. At a certain point he steps on a land mine and goes flying and lands on ground. Doesnt look right because the prop is still parented to the hand. Any ideas anyone??

Ideas, yes and no :) You can not unparent a prop mid animation. The solution is to have two props. The first as you have it parented to the hand. The second out of view. At the frame where you want to unparent, scale the first to zero, hide it in the hand and bring in its twin to take over.

Just make sure to watch the curves... you want the scaling to be linear interpolation, and have a 100% / 0% keyframe right next to each other. Basically, consider the O to be 100% scale and o to be .001% scale, nad . to be a frame counter. The first prop would be: O.........Oo........ The second: o.........oO.......

Valander, thanks for replying. But I have no idea what your post means. I have never gotten that in depth into editing. Could you post what those terms and figures mean in english, and how to apply it? Regards

Valandar means that in frame 1, parented prop scale is 100% and unparented prop scale is 0%, and the same goes for frame N-1. No interpolation - constant section in graph. At frame N, where you "unparent" the prop, parented prop scale is 0% and unparented prop scale is 100%. What I also do is just move them in and out of frame, like going from y=10 to y=0.7, so one appears suddenly and the other disappears at the same time.

You can change the parenting of a prop BUT you need to be very careful.the parenting of the object is a global (same in all frames) so IF you need to change anything in a section already done you need to remember to reparent the prop while making the changes. If at frame 1 you parent a prop to a figure and record your keyframes to (for example frame 90) the motions of the prop will be recorded in the keyframes to that point. If you then change the parenting of the object and record keyframes from frame 91 to end of animation all of the object movements are stored with the new parenting in effect. The other method of using two objects is preferred if you need to be adjusting the two sections of the animation. An alternative to scaling the object to make it invisible would be to animate the texture.

Thank you for replying, but I really didnt understand your post. Please explain how to do this in steps. A linear sequence how to unparent a prop from a figure at a specific time in an animation.

You need to play with a simple animation first. Create a new scene and load a cube primitive and a cone primitive from props. Position them however you like, cone above cube but not touching is good. Parent the cone to the cube. Now record keyframe for frame 1. Move to frame 30, move the cube (cone moves as well since it is parented to the cube) record the keyframe. press previous keyframe button and play animation. (cube and cone move together) Now goto frame 31 - change parenting of cone prop to universe. record keyframe. goto frame 60 move cube (cone does not move) move cone position it somewhere away from cube. record keyframe now return to frame 1 ** do not move anything ** play animation you should get cube and cone moving together until frame 30 and then they move seperatly until frame 60 (the end) when learning animations play with the keyframe editor, note what is recorded at each keyframe, have a look at the result of the different interpolation types.