Throwing props can be super easy in Moho (Animate Studio). If you work with animating 2D characters, you know that rigging is a really important part of the process. You also know that a character rig can expand far beyond the character itself. What if the character needs to interact with props? What if the character needs to pick something up and then put it back down or throw it? You might think that a simple parent operation, but if you are used to using After Effects, it just doesn’t have that flexibility.
Inflexible After Effects
In Ae’s case, if you are going to throw props around you either have to set it up so that there are two props, one that is always in the characters hand, and one that can be thrown, and then key the visibility of each, essentially “faking” it. Or you can use a 3rd party tool like Good Parents.
Why Not Just Key Parenting?
With Moho, you can just set a key for parenting, without buying anything else. Although Anime Studio does have constraints for a task like this, you can simply key parenting. Just how exactly is that done? Glad you asked! Here, Freelance Designer Jeff Holland shows how you can have a character hold and throw props in Moho (Animate Studio Pro) by simply setting keys for parenting. It is actually much easier than it sounds.
Constraints are Really Flexible
Ultimately, a constraint system solves a lot of these problems. With a constraint, such as a parent constraint or similar, a child can have any number of parents. The cup can belong to the table, a character’s hand, the world-space and another character at the same time. The only issue without utilizing a constraint for parenting (such as a parent constraint or similar) is that you wont be able to key the weight of the parent. With straight-up parenting, one object can only have one parent, while with a parent constraint can have any number of parents, and key the weight of the child between them.
