Lesson 1: Parenting Vs. Parent Constraint

Lesson 1: Parenting Vs. Parent Constraint

Parenting:

                Parenting is the most common function in Autodesk Maya that allows for one or more objects to follow another. When parenting, click the “child” or the object you want to follow and Shift select the “parent” or the object you want to lead then hit P. Now if you select the parent, it will always select the child. The child now follows the parent but its translation, rotation, and scale values do not change.

Steps to Parenting:

 Step 1: Make two or more objects. Go to the Create Tab à Polygon Primitives à whatever shape you want

Step 2: Hold the Shift button and select the child then the parent.

Step 3: Hit P.

Parent Constraint:

                A Parent Constraint differs from Parenting because Autodesk Maya creates a connection that actually affects the child object’s translation and rotation values, but the constraint does not influence the scale values at all. I refer to the parent object as the “driver” and the child object as the “driven.” A driven object can have more than one driver per connection, but you have to make multiple connections to have more than one driven per driver. The Parent Constraint gives you more control in other areas as well that will come in handy when you actually start setting up a rig, but this is a brief summary of how a Parent Constraint differs from a strait Parent.

Setting Up a Parent Constraint:

Step 1: Make two or more objects. Go to the Create Tab à Polygon Primitives à whatever shape you want 

                     

Step 2: Hold down the Shift button and select the driver then the driven.

Step 3: Go to the top, and make sure the Menu Bar setting is on Animation.

Step 4: Go to the Constraint Tab à Parent and the driven object should turn pink

                 

*Look in the channel box; you will find the translation and rotation values for the driven object to be blue. Any time you see channel boxes highlighted with a color, it means that the object is being controlled by an other source. Sometimes the highlighted values cannot be changed, but others, like this parent constraint, will still allow you to change the driven object without affecting the constraint's effect.*

Reference

(2012).Maya's User's Guide: Create a Parent Constraint.http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/index.html?url=files/CSCo_Parent_constraint_workflow.htm,topicNumber=d30e296266
Slick, Justin.Maya Training Series1.3 Object Creation.N.D.http://3d.about.com/od/Creating-3D-The-CG-Pipeline/ss/Maya-Lesson-1-3-Object-Creation.htm