Change parent object on instantiation

Question

I'm making a game in which I have different weapons. One of them is a hand grenade. Well, the question is:

I made an animation with mecanim (I don't know if is the correct way) with the grenade being is a child of the main character. Then, the animation is correct (the grenade goes to high scale and I have the false sensation that is going up, to the camera).

The problem is that this grenade is attached to the character, and when I move the character, the grenade moves with him. I need the grenade to not be linked to the character when it's launched. And when I instantiate a new grenade, I need this animation playing.

I don't know if I explained the situation well, but this is the idea, an animated grenade launching when the player press the shoot button... what is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

For me it should be done in this way:

1. What we need:

   • A throw point - a Transform attached to mode's palm of hand
   • Throw animation
   • (Option A ) A event that will be fired during the throw animation, at the moment that the grenade should leave player's hand / (Option B) Or the infomation about how much time it will take from the beginning of the throw animation to the moment when grenade should leave.

2. How we do it:
   

   Option A:
   In the function (let's call it ThrowGrenade, in class Player), you play Player's throw animation. Make another function called OnGrenadeLeave which will be called from animation (information about how to set up an animation event should be easily found on google ). In this function, the first thing we do is detach the grenade from Player's hand, just use grenade's transform.SetParrent() so set new parent for it (just simple null, it will not have parent object). Next we play animation on the grenade.

   Option B
   We declare function ThrowGrenade as a coroutine, which will do the followings: play Player's throw animation -> WaitForSeconds (timeTillGrenadeLeaves) -> detach grenade -> play grenade's animation.

In game, you just call ThrowGrenade, and that's it.

Answer 2

This is the code I used to make the shoot of the grenade. It works, but now, I'm thinking when I need to destroy the object on collision, is possible that I will need to put de newShoot variable out of the function, or create an array or something similar. I will think this problem on few days.

function ShootGrenade()
{   
  var newShoot : GameObject;
  newShoot = Instantiate(grenade, lauchingPoint.transform);
  newShoot.transform.SetParent(null);
  newShoot.SetActive(true);
  newShoot.transform.FindChild("grenade_sprite").GetComponent.<Animator> ().Play("Grenade"+grenadeNumber);
}

"GrenadeNumber" is the number of animation to play: grenade1 shoots to up, 2 to front, and 3 to front but more far. The number is assigned pressing more or less time the shoot button. Grenade parent is deactivated, and I active it when I create a new one.