Character picking up a glass...could use a suggestion or two

[kmarkus-walczak]

Ok, while I'm not new to Maya or even animation for that matter, I am pretty new to character animation (in Maya at least), so please bear with me...

Basically I have a girl sitting at the counter of a diner and as the camera approaches her and goes past her, she's going to reach out and pick up her pop glass and take a sip from the straw.  It's gonna be about a 5 - 6 second cut.  All well and good...except for the motion of the glass itself.  The glass is sitting on the counter until she grabs it, then she has to lift it to her mouth. I have an idea here, but I'm wondering if there's a better/easier way to do this.

My initial thought is to basically do this as two seperate Maya scenes...one with her arm in motion as her hand approaches the glass and her hand grasps it, then a second picking up from there with the glass parented to her hand so that as her arm bends, the glass stays in her hand.  I'm sure this would work, however I suspect it might be easier if I could somehow keyframe the parenting and just do this as one single scene....no parenting on the glass until her hand grasps it, then turn parenting on at that frame so she can lift it to her mouth...however I'm not sure if, let alone how, I could do that.

Thoughts?  Is there perhaps an easier way?

BTW...not sure if this matters or would effect anything, but I do have IK handles setup on her arm(s) with some basic hand controls (grasp) setup via Expressions.

Thanks!

[kmarkus-walczak]

Never mind....figured out how to do it using Animation Layers.

[lee.dunham]

plenty of solutions. Most accepted would be enabling/disabling parent constraints. Look into ZVParentMaster.