Snap rotation Maya..

Flynny

Hey guys sorry to post such a simple (i hope) question here but does anyone know of a way to snap an object to another object in maya that also snaps the rotation?

Long story short I cant apply a constraint as im animating a hand thats jumping between alot of stuff (grab here an there etc) and ive also animated at other points in the timeline between other various parents so adding another constrain would sort of skew things up.

Up till now ive been gettin over this problem by just animating on perframe and doing it by eye, but surely theres a better way?

Or is Maya 8.5 just that crap?

ivars

It's hard to say without knowing your animation setup / rig. Could you maybe share some screens?

MoP

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/modeling/misc/Align-Tool-4470.html

This sounds like it might help...

Funky Bunnies

i think I've tried that one and I couldn't get it to behave correctly sometimes because of the way it looks up rotation. Give that shot first, though.

if not, I tested my quick script on constrained hierarchical things with animation
I didn't add a gui though, so it just fully aligns to rotation and position. So hopefully it would work in this situation.


{
//snaps to last selected object

//store selected transforms
string $selection[] = `ls -sl -l -tr`;
if (`size $selection`>1)
{
warning ( (`size $selection`-1) + " objects snapped to last selected object");

int $lastIndex = (`size $selection`-1);

//create a locator to parent constrain
string $pivLocator[] = `spaceLocator -p 0 0 0 -n pivLocator`;
string $constraintTemp[] = `parentConstraint -weight 1 $selection[$lastIndex] $pivLocator[0]`;
float $initPos[] = `xform -q -ws -rp $pivLocator[0]`;
float $initRot[] = `xform -q -a -ro $pivLocator[0]`;

delete -constraints $constraintTemp[0];
delete $pivLocator;

//reapply selection of just the things I care about
select -r $selection;
select -d $selection[$lastIndex];

//move them foos
move -a -ws -xyz $initPos[0] $initPos[1] $initPos[2];
//rotate them foos
rotate -a -ws -xyz $initRot[0] $initRot[1] $initRot[2];

}
else
error "select two or more objects first!";

}

[edit: did a quick edit to check if you have enough objects selected, oops!]

Flynny

Thankyou so much guys! Wasnt expecting such a speedy response!
Ivars, unfortunately i cant show squat and im too lazy to rip apart the scene to show

Mop havent tried your idea but it looks like a good answer.
But Funky Bunnies saves the day, i OWE YOU BIG TIME!