Moho Forum

Hi All,

Can anyone enlighten me.

I want to animate a telephone conversation between 2 people. One on a normal phone and the other on a mobile. How do you animate picking up an object and putting it down again. Is there a way to parent an object to the characters hand and then unparenting it within an animation?

Thanks in advance.

As far as I know, there is no technical way to pick up an item. What most will do is in a switch layer for the hands, have a layer with the item already in the hand. So draw out the item, duplicate it in a new hand switch layer. Then when the character goes to pick it up, turn off the main items visibility and change to the appropriate hand and item switch layer...

Hi Wizaerd,

Thanks for the response. I was going to try that as an idea out of my head, trying to work out how I could achieve this but wasn't sure if there was some kind of parenting hand to object option that I hadn't seen before. OK so I'll go the switch layer route.

Thanks again

jaakay wrote: Thanks for the response. I was going to try that as an idea out of my head, trying to work out how I could achieve this but wasn't sure if there was some kind of parenting hand to object option that I hadn't seen before. OK so I'll go the switch layer route.

Thanks again

No problem. I've asked this same question a few times here, and in other forums for other animation applications. I only know of one program (2D) that allows for this capability, (temporarily re-parenting a bone) but it has fewer real capabilities when it comes to other aspects of animation.

The switch layer works well, and is a fairly standard technique for characters manipulating/holding objects.

Here is one way. Its in AS7, if you have 6 and can send it as 6. Look at the way I duplicated the receiver of the phone and used invis.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/cdc630

Hi Sbtamu,

That technique is great. Thank you very much.