But in order to do so I figured it would be important for me to go over and re-visit animating with props using constraints. I figured it would save me some trouble down the road and decrease the number of my hairs I might pull - so lets jump over this hurdle.
Using props can be tricky depending on the object or how it will be animated because it will determine the way it has to be constrained or quickly rigged. Obviously more complex animations or actions will require a prop to be "rigged" and I found out today that it is beneficial to have more than one control on the prop.
Once a constraint is created between a prop and the characters hand, the channel box suddenly looks not so animator friendly. Because there will be multiple connections going through an IK arm, I learned it is a great idea to create a group node for the IK control:
On the regular IK arm, when a constraint is made, a new attribute will appear which is the "blend parent." Trying to animate on this control with all the connections going through will eventually get messy. So creating a group node for the control not only gives you clean translations and rotations, but now I can add a new attribute to control my constraint.
My "follow spear" (spear is the prop I was using with my character) will allow me to turn on and off the constraint. When I created the attribute, I had to go into the connection editor and set a connection from the 'blend parent' to the 'follow spear' attribute so it can be functional.
Highlighted below the blend parent attribute is the "weight of the constraint" for my prop. It's possible to use this as an alternative to control constraints but it doesn't transition as well and might create "popping" later.
It's taking me a bit to get use to doing it this way - but so far this method seems pretty successful. Of course this is one of the MANY ways you can use constraints for animating with props.
Blocking pass:
First polishing pass:
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