Setting up an object-to-bone relationship
Visually speaking, you might say there’s already a relationship between Rain’s hand and the ball. I mean, at frame 30, it certainly looks like Rain is holding it (see Figure 10.7), but the ball doesn’t know that, and if we continued to animate Rain picking up the ball, the ball would stubbornly remain where it is:
Figure 10.11: What does she think she’s looking at?
Our goal in this section is to attach that ball to something in Rain’s armature so that when Rain picks it up, it actually gets picked up.
“Easy,” you might be thinking, “just parent the ball to a bone in Rain’s hand.” That’s how a lot of rigging works, but parenting is a “forever” kind of relationship – one that extends infinitely forward and backward through time. Rain would always be holding the ball. She would never put it down and would have to wear...
