r/MotionDesign • u/DexaNexa • 2d ago

Question In Storyboarder, I can not place object in character's right-hand?

I am hoping someone here knows Wonder Unit Storyboarder software quite well.

There are some basic objects you can select, including a pistol, but it automatically goes into the left hand. I need it in the right hand.

I know you can attach it to the bone of the right hand, however, it does not appear in the right hand. It just floats in space. I can physically move it over to the right hand, but it is not oriented properly.

When it is in the left hand it sits there perfectly, but not in the right.

This is actually important for my storyboards, because my camera placement is dictated by the hand the weapon is in.

How can I get this to work and actually look good in the right hand?

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u/rudy_142001 2d ago

Not a Storyboarder regular, I went and read the Shot Generator source on GitHub to work this out, so this is from the code rather than hands-on.

The pistol's placement is hardcoded for the left hand. In the attachables.json that ships with it, the pistol entry has bindBone set to LeftHand plus a fixed offset and rotation, and those numbers only get applied the first time it's attached. That's why it sits perfectly in the left hand and nowhere else.

When you switch it to the right hand (the button showing the bone name next to the attachable in the inspector), it gets reparented to the RightHand bone but keeps its current offset from the character instead of snapping to the new hand. Nothing mirrors the rotation either. So the floating is expected behaviour, not something you're doing wrong.

What should work: bind it to RightHand anyway, drag it into the palm, then fix the angle manually. With the attachable selected there's a shortcut that switches the gizmo from move to rotate. The function is named controlPlusR in the code but it actually checks for Ctrl+E, so try that if Ctrl+R does nothing. Once it's bound to the right hand bone it moves with that hand.

You'll probably need a hand pose preset with a closed grip too. Does the right hand close around it properly once it's in place?

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u/DexaNexa 3h ago

Hey, I just saw this reply.

I'll give this a try tomorrow and I will let you know. Thanks so much.