Edit constraint and parent offsets (compensation)

[Maido Hollo]

Coming from Softimage there was button for both parent and constraint compensation. When I wanted to move parent without moving it's child or editing constrained object offset, I just turned it on and made my fixes. 

For constraints, official "Softimage to Maya Bridge" says that Maya has Modify Constrained Axis command for this, but when I run this after I moved my constrained object around, it just snaps back to the original offset. It seems to be the command for, like it says, modifying the axis, not the offset itself. 

So in short: 

1) How can I modify contraint offset?

2) Is there a way to move parent without it's children?

Thank you, 

[Stephen]

PArent constraints have a button in the attribute editor for updating the constraint axis.   

   You can move the child and then hit the button and it will update it  

 For groups you can permanently turn off child inheritance for TRS also on the attribute editor by un checking the box for "inherit transforms".  

 It's kinda rare in maya not to want the child to follow.  As parenting in maya is for creating a transform heirarchy. Vs what I believe softimage parenting is more like "sets".  Which in maya is for organization of collections.  ( nodes & components ) 

Hth 

-=s 

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[Anthony Enos]

Stephen's answer is totally correct, but there is another option that I tend to prefer. I often have an "attach" locator which has a parent constraint with no offset, an "offset" node underneath, and my object under that node. It's much quicker to move and keyframe objects this way in my opinion, and everything shows up as standard keys in the channel box or timeline, rather than happening on the constraint node itself. Since the animation is happening on the "offset" node, you can quickly update your object by parenting it underneath the "offset" node without worrying about copying constraints, etc.

[Maido Hollo]

Update button underneath Attribute Editor works great, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. 

Unchecking "inherit transofrms" does what it promises, but it's not suitable for the temporary compensation what I was looking for, when I turn it back on after moving parent around, it pops back to the parent. 

I think in Softimage it was quite the same for the hierarchy logic, it just had this compensation option for temporary nudges, was quite handy, when I needed to fix the parent position without affecting children. 

[Maido Hollo]

Yes, it might be good idea to have some extra locators in hierarchy, tnx :)

[Stephen]

Yup. Standard rigging for parenting is you never animate the constrained object.  Always put a controller above.  

  Or two.  One for the constraint and one for offset.  

    This is how most people do parent switching.   On switch the offset control gets snapped and keyed to last position  so the object doesn't move.  

   Also you can key constrained objects and a pair blend will be created so you can blend between constrained and just keyed relative to parent space.  It's a little less elegant. But works. 

  And lastly if you aren't subject to specific rigs nor care you can use animation layers to offset the animation.  ( however. I can't really recommend this route ) 

 Hth. 

-=s