Floating Characters

[Aabh]

Hey guys... I have a client who wanted this animation an hour ago and I've been completely done with it except for one problem for nearly 5 hours...  I'm so very frustrated that I think I'm missing something obvious.

I have my characters rigged and ready to go, but when I pin them, they still float all over the place. One character is sitting at a table, the table layer is in the Character layer, seperate from the head layer. I just need her head to move, but when I turn my head the table, her body, EVERYTHING moves.  Like all over the scene... it's clearly tied to my body movements... but it just makes it look like 

It took me nearly an hour to learn that the staple tool doesn't exist anymore... I had another character whose head kept coming off... I've settled him down, at least his head is attached (I had to figure out how the layer thing works... I understood staples instinctually, but the layer thing is really counter intuitive, so I just copied "Rin" and it worked), but his mesh doesn't deform at all, so he just pivots back and forth like a piece of cardboard. 

I used the Rin character and tried to mimic her setup but I'm still not getting deformation nor will the pins work. Litarally the only thing I can do is disable the camera input and manually controll the animation with keyboard input and mouse input. 

I'm very frustrated and I have an upset client, so forgive me for being cranky sounding... can anyone help without sending me to 6 hours of video tutorials?

Thanks!

[alank99101739]

Can you share a screenshot of the rigging hierarchy, including where you have put a fixed pin?

What I look for is where the independent layers are. Non-independent layers are effectively merged into one mesh (shown by yellow outline). An independent layer starts a new mesh. The origin of the child mesh is then dragged over the parent mesh to attach it at that point (the parent mesh turns green when it's overlapping for attachement). The only other thing to watch is the Face behavior head position strength setting. It defaults to 100%, but that is almost always too strong for me.

'Finally pins on a mesh (handles tagged with 'fixed') attach that location to the parent mesh, or the scene if it's in the root mesh. To stop it moving therefore, you must put the pin on the root mesh or else it won't stop it floating in the scene.

Also a common error is to have an independent group with all children being independent. That means the mesh in the middle has no artwork, so the mesh is size zero. That makes it impossible to attach to.

A screenshot of your rigging hierarchy can help others spot these sorts of issues.

[Aabh]

Absolutely 🙂 

And thank you for helping.  I walked away for a little bit and that has helped as well (Hence why it took me some time to answer). Took a walk in the park, etc. The client isn't going to get any more upset. I should still have it by midnight tonight... in theory.