Parents and Children By M. Maigrot

S  t  e  p   2 :

Discarding a parent->children hierarchy is easy. You just have to select the children to unlink and press 'ALT+P'. Three choices are offered to you:

Clear parent: The link is removed and the orphan recovers its initial location, size and orientation. Some remarks of note : if the parent object hasn't been modified by any of the three base operators (grab and move, rotate, scale), everything is alright. In the contrary case, you must know that all operators on the parent also effects the child but that the new data aren't written in the child's 'Data-Block' . This is why the child might disappear from the visible part of the 3D screen when using this command. Press the DOT-KEY '.' to visualize it again, or 'SHIFT+C' in order to get a global view of all objects.

Clear parent and keep transform: (CLR Track) This option solves the trouble dealed with in the previous option : all the modification applied to the child through the parent will be kept when the parental link is removed.

Clear parent without inverse: When a standard parent -> child hierarchy is set, the (possible) alterations applied to the parent before that the link was set aren't applied to the child object. Use this option if 'Make parent' has been used by error. It is sometimes used when you have used the second parenting option 'Make parent without transform' through the 'CTRL+SHIFT+P' shortcut ; in this case, the initial alterations are applied to the child and it is only when a link of this kind is established that this clearing option find its use.

'Make parent without transform' through the 'CTRL+SHIFT+P' shortcut: If the object to be set as a parent has been altered before the hierarchy is set, the alterations are inherited by the child as well during the setting of the hierarchy. This means that the gravity center of the child will be placed over the gravity center of the parent, and that the child will inherit the scale factor and the rotation angle from its parent (about this subject, it is highly recommanded to clear any child rotation by using ALT+R before setting the hierarchy). This option is barely useful (you can need it in order to link an object to a curve) and you should avoid to use it along with the standard 'Make parent' option. You may have some trouble to understand what is the situation of your objects...

In order to tell the difference between a parent and its children : take a look to the link in the 'Data blocks' window and you should see a filled circle at the end of a link, indicating the parent.

After all these explanations, you can know unlink the two hierarchy set in the previous step, and select (in this straight order): 'one', 'three', 'two'. Set the hierarchy and you'll see that a lone parent can have an infinite number of children.