For the record, I parented a spline to the root (I animated the spline). I just want to transfer the animation of the spline to the root through the Bake Animation feature...
I would recommend not to parent the hand below the twist joint, and add the twist joint as a duplicate of the elbow in the hierarchy beside the hand It will be much easier to setup
generic browser -> new-> then select material instance constant from the "factory" dropdown Then just fill in the blanks, and be sure to choose an existing material as the material parent.
you can, however, navigate to the parent material (if bridge makes them... it might not for weird copyright reasons) from the instance parameter panel.