How to rig a transforming weapon to a character ?

[kaptainbradukk]

Hello everyone

As the title implies, I am trying to rig a weapon that transform through blend shapes to my character, but since I am a beginner into rigs, I do not know how to do this. I've tried several methods, but they only apply on weapons with only one form. Here are the two forms my weapon will be in :

Thanks in advance, have a great day

[kirbysteele · Accepted solution]

Hey kaptain,

If you are rigging for animation in Maya then the process should be as easy as putting the gun into a group and parenting that group to both the root joint and whatever hand the character will use to wield the weapon. Then by toggling the weights of the two parent constraints the gun should follow the correct joint. 

Let me know if you have any problems with this or you are planning to put this into a game and I can outline a process for doing that.

Hope this helps!

[kaptainbradukk]

And it worked, thanks a lot, Kirbysteele, that was helpful !

Unfortunately, this weapon is not for a game, but for an animation project I am doing. But thanks for proposing your help on that too !