Object not parenting to character's hand

[asjones4JYJRG]

I am trying to parent a sword to a character's hand but it won't work. The sword has it's on rig and the geometry is in separate pieces grouped together, could this be interfering with parenting it? I parented a mug to a hand a few weeks ago without any issues, the only difference was that the mug didn't have a rig and was all in one piece.

[dinofiguera · Accepted solution]

when you work with rigged objects, you should play with their controllers and not the geometry itself, Also,

it is better to use Parent constraints rather than simple parenting,  for many reasons.
put your sword in position, select the control of your character hand, then shift-select the control that moves the sword. Now with the object selected in this order (the order matters)  go to the animation menu and click on

Constrain/parent/option box.
In the parent constraint options, check "maintain offset" to constrain your object by keeping its position unchanged.

Now your sword will follow the hand of the character.

Check the use of constraints in the manual or some tutorial for further information, they are very powerful.
Cheers

D

[asjones4JYJRG]

It worked, thank you so much for your help!