[MAYA] why there is no "parent" constraint?

evilmushroom

It’s weird that such a basic (and mandatory) constraint is missing from the "top-tier" animation software.

But before someone points to that thing labelled "Parent" under the Constrain menu, or shares links to the help docs. let’s define what parenting actually means.

A parent is a hierarchical relationship: one object is the parent, the other the child. The child follows the parent’s transform (translate, rotate, scale). You do this in Maya by MMB-dragging the child under the parent in the Outliner. Simple.

All objects are initially parented to the world. Changing a child’s parent just changes the hierarchy, it doesn’t affect the object’s ability to be animated.

Now here’s the weird part:

Maya’s so called Parent Constraint doesn’t behave like that at all.

It doesn’t create a hierarchy. It just copies the transform of the target. And if you animate the constrained object? It breaks the illusion completely because it was never a real parent relationship. It’s just a glorified "Copy Transform" by blender language, or "position constraint" by 3dsmax language, mislabeled as "Parent."

So here’s the question:

Why doesn’t Maya have a real Parent Constraint, one that simulates dynamic hierarchy changes with actual world-space preservation, like Blender’s Child Of, or 3ds Max’s Link Constraint from 20 years ago?

Every DCC has its own philosophy, sure.

So what’s the philosophy here?

Am I missing something?

Or is it the same line of thinking that made Maya users extrude along spline for 20 years… until Mesh Sweep was introduced in 2022?

Eric Chadwick

I'm not a longtime Maya user, but maybe the workflow described here might help you.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/constrains/td-p/6719882

evilmushroom

Eric Chadwick said:

I'm not a longtime Maya user, but maybe the workflow described here might help you.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/constrains/td-p/6719882

Thank you for taking the time to respond, but just to clarify, I’m not asking how to use Maya’s “Parent Constraint.” I’m pointing out that the feature itself is fundamentally not a real parent constraint, and that’s the core issue.

the problem in the link you shared can indeed be solved by a "copy transform" (by blender language) or "position constraint" (by 3dsmax language) or "parent" (by maya language), as all is needed is to have that scalp to follow the exact head animation with or without offset, because the scalp does not need to move.

lets explain what copy transform is first, it means copy the transforms from parent and apply them to child frame by frame, if child is animated, copy transform is no longer valid as it cannot do its job.

lets take a second example, if you parent a knife to the hand, that knife will follow the hand, if you move the fingers, you will have to animate the knife, it can be done if you parent through the outliner with a real parenting, but if you use constraint, the moment you animate the knife, the link is broken in maya, but works fine in every other DCC, why? because maya does not have a "parent" constraint, it has a copy transform labelled "parent" .. like a fiat car with ferrari logo, it does not make it a ferrari. 

I also know the maya solution (or better say workaround), you have to:
1. create locator
2. align locator with hand
3. parent locator to hand through outliner
4. parent constraint the knife to locator

while in any other DCC its:
1. parent constraint knife to hand

Eric Chadwick

Yeah you’ll need someone super familiar with Maya rigging, which is not me. Perhaps @poopipe