Issues with parenting

[walkinginspace]

I'm doing one of my first character setups and I'm getting a bit frustrated. I looked up parenting in the manual and it says that whenever you parent a object, it automaticlly goes to the orgin of the object your parenting to. Well i have my characters hand all setup and looking great, now i go to parent a finger to the hand and BLAM it's all out of whack. Is there something I can do to get around this? Another question, in modeler, say i have three objects that I want to have in one layer but I want all three objects to have there own pivot points(say it's a segmented finger), is there anyway to do this, i know these are newbie question and I'm sorry for their lameness:)

steve

[dablan]

Are you setup with bones in the hand?
Make sure that you de-activate the bones before parenting, and also make sure all bones are active to see how they all react.
Often, users activate one bone which can look like your model is all screwy, but once all bones are active, the model will fall into place.

[walkinginspace]

not using bones at all. It's a rigid robot, just straight parenting to each object....metal object...as opposed to organic....

steve

[dablan]

I see.
Make sure then that your pivots are all correctly placed.

If everything was working fine as you say, then try using the Parent in Place option.

[walkinginspace]

Parenting in place worked great, any ideas on my second question? It seems pretty simple but I haven't figured it out.....

steve

P.S.

Your books rock!:)

[dablan]

Cool.

Yeah! Select the desired layer.
Go to the Detail tab, and then on the left is PIVOT.
Click and set the pivot. Save the object.

[walkinginspace]

What if you have three separte objects that you want to have indiviual pivot points on the same layer? Say u have three cylinders and they are on the same layer, but you want each to have it's own dependant pivot point...i don't even know if this is possible or not....just wondering....

steve

[dablan]

Doesn't really work that way.
If you have three parts on one layer, you only have one pivot per layer, unless of course, you put bones in.

Dan

[walkinginspace]

cool, thanks for the help Dan, and again keep the books coming:)

steve

[dablan]

Thanks Steve!

Best of luck.