Maya has tools for animating between multiple parents, with Maya’s Parent constraint. You can simply adjust and animate the weight between multiple parents in an animation. At first, it is not that intuitive, but it works well. Could it be better, though?
It can with the Switch Constraint Node. Naughty Dog ‘s Character TD Hans Godard’s Switch Constraint is a node for Maya’s dependency graph that will allow you to easily switch between multiple parents in an animation.
The switch constraint was developed to be super simple, so that you can animate which ever driver you want. All you have to do is create the Constraint, then
choose which parent you want and at what time. You can choose to keep the node in your scene, or bake it down into keyframes.
You may remember Hans’ demonstration for his amazing Skinning Converter solver for Maya, which can covert deformation animation to skinned and weighted joint driven animation.
Hans also developed the Radial Basis Function solver (RBF Solver) which is a way to interpolate inputs based on a system of defined poses.
The switch constraint can be found on the Autodesk Exchange for $69.99, with special discounts given for students and freelancers.
