Animating Parent Constraints on Controllers

[Anonymous]

Hello all, I'm animating a fight between two T-rexes. At one point in the fight, Rex 1 grabs Rex 2 by the neck and shakes him around a bit. I need to animate parent constraints so that I can move Rex 1's head and have Rex 2 follow, and be able to switch the constraint on and off. I'm not too familiar with animating constraints. I grabbed Rex 1's head control then constrained Rex 2's center of gravity to that. But now I can't seem to key the weight between them so that it only stays constrained for a certain number of frames. It's either always on or always off.

Any suggestions?

[Anonymous]

Additional info: I have two animation layers. Specifically I can't seem to key the 'Blend Parent' node once I've constrained one controller to another. The node shows up, but when I try to key it nothing happens. Thus it's either always turned on or off.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

FINALLY figured it out. I had to add the node itself to the new animation layer before I could key it - having the controls alone on that layer wasn't enough.

[Anonymous]

You don't happen to have a screenshot or a video of your two t-rexes? I'm fairly interested in dinosaur animation and I haven't seen anybody do it yet.  Don't know if you've heard of picarto.tv yet, but I watched a livestream on animation once on that platform and for me personally, it was really helpful since I could interact with the person streaming. 

[Anonymous]

I'll ask my boss if I can show off a screenie or a video. I'm quite pleased with how the final fight turned out 🙂 I'll just need to make sure he's okay with me showing it.

[Anonymous]

That would be awesome! 🙂 I'd really love to see it, if it's possible for you to show it. Like I said, I've seen something similar do that on the picarto.tv livestreaming website and I really enjoy these things. I just love watching talented people streaming their stuff live, the whole process is just fun.