One of the trickier hitches with animating in maya is dynamic parenting, aka space switching. Constraints go a long way but without the know-how it can be very frustrating to animate the passing of objects from one space to another. While there are some great tools for speeding up workflow and easing the pain of space switching (see Hamish McKenzie''s zooToolbox or John Doublestein''s JTDdynParentUI) if you just need to switch spaces from one object to the world it''s fairly easy with the standard maya toolset. We''ll start with a pre-existing scene of an animated scooper and by the end it will pick up a ball and release it into the air in a few easy steps.

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