How to put object into hand of a character

[rbgreenway]

I’ve become stumped trying to do what, in my mind, should be a simple thing. I’m trying to put an object into the hand of a fully rigged character.
More specifically, from samples on the Nucleus server, I pulled a character from the “Squad” assets into a scene. Then I pull a weapon from the “Squad” assets into the scene. Both show up nicely in the viewport. I want to put the weapon into the hand of the character, so in the stage view, I drag the weapon onto the right hand SkelJoint of the character. The result is that the weapon disappears. I’ve tried wrapping the weapon in a Xform, and then making it a child of the right hand SkelJoint, but get same behavior. I’m missing something simple, I’m sure, but can’t seem to figure it out.

The attached video shows exactly what I’m doing, and the resulting behavior.

Thanks for any advice that anyone can provide.

[TManVFX]

You’ll need to use the Transform Constraint feature, found under the Animation menu.

Position a XForm prim close to the hand bone. Select the bone, then select the XForm, and select Transform Constraint.

Now parent your weapon to the XForm and move it to the desired location. It will then follow the hand bone during animation.

Pro tip: It’s easiest to constrain the transform to the bone with the skeleton in the default pose.

[rbgreenway]

Thank you for this information. It’s certainly not obvious, is a working solution.

BTW, I’ve been working in Isaac Sim and there’s no Animation menu…at least by default. I had to do this in Machinima to get access to the Animation menu and Transform Constraints. Is there an extension I can add to Issac Sim that would make the constraint available? The issue is that my ultimate goal is to use Replicator to generate data, and Machinima doesn’t have Replicator.

Thinking about it now, maybe I can just create my scenes in Machinima, save it, and then load it into Isaac. I’ll try that.

Regardless, thanks for the excellent instruction!!!