From the course: Animation Foundations: Fundamentals

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Working with hierarchies

Working with hierarchies

From the course: Animation Foundations: Fundamentals

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Working with hierarchies

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Many objects in the world are comprised of assemblies or multiple parts that are connected together. These can be mechanical assemblies, anatomical assemblies such as a skeleton or other assemblies such as planets orbiting a star. When animating such systems, we can define the connections between the objects using hierarchies. The hierarchy tells the computer what is connected to what. Hierarchies have a tree-like structure, much like the folders on your computer's disk drive. Let's take a look at a mechanical assembly. As with all hierachies, one object or node is the parent node or the root. Below that, are children, and below those can be more connections, or more children. These parent child relationships define the order of connection. So, if you move a parent, the children follow along. Moving a child, however, does not affect the parent. When an object is a child, its position is always relative to its parent. The child does not have to be physically or visually connected to…

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