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Unreal mannequin hierarchy

Hi guys! Someone could explain me why the hand_gun joint of the unreal mannequin are separated from the hand and attached to a root_hands? I would like to know if this prop joints hierarchy is the convention in the rigging world or this is an unreal method. When I rig my own stuff I usually parent the prop joint to the character’s wrist, I assume that when holding a two hands weapons is a bit uncomfortable. Thank you and have a nice weekend

My only idea why: if it’s attached to the root, you get root-space coordinates in the joint, which might be useful in the game engine. Otherwise, imagine you are doing space switching and placing the gun on a table. The joint is still in wrist-coordinates in the skeleton. So then if you have additional movement added to the character (layered animation clips, or game-play animation), you’d have to zero out that weapon motion relative to the wrist instead of to the more stable root-space.