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I've long thought that the expression "Parent to" is being used in an inverse manner.
If I "Parent A to B" I make A the parent to B and B the child of A, but I often hear the expression being used to describe the opposite relationship.
Am I the only one being confused about this?
Here's an example @ 3:30 in an otherwise excellent video: https://youtu.be/xdPMziIHFlU?t=209
Can we agree that he's really making the foot the parent and the head the child?
Given the fact that there are more than seven billion people out there, it approaches certainty that many might share a similar view, even among the Blender community right now.
Personally I never saw this as a two way street until you brought it up. I have never seen the word used in that particular manner outside 3D. Turn B into A's parent would be more obvious, I agree.
It all comes down to definitions and associations. You try to give the verb a universally applicable meaning. And Blender's use of the verb collides a bit with previous uses of the word.
In Blender, parenting A to B should always mean: B is the parent, A is the child.
Just substitute 'parenting' with 'glueing'. Glue A to B. It's at least tempting to assume that B is somehow bigger, even if it's a bit biased.
Alright I just watched enough of that tutorial, and the author of it is not confused or using the term in a misleading way.
Yes the foot bone is the Parent object, and the head bone is the child.
He is parenting the head bone to the foot bone.
Whenever you use the word parent as a verb like that (parent A to B) it always means A is the child and B is the parent.
It follows the natural selection order, select the child first then select the parent.
You could think of it like a function with two parameters. parent(a,b) The first parameter is the child, then the last parameter is the parent object.
I think the trouble comes from "Parent" being use to describe the controlling object, and the linking relationship. Would it make any more sense if it was "Link A to B"? To me at least it is clear that A will be linked to B, thus B will be controlling A. No different if you use the word parent instead of link.
a.parent = b)? And then is "parenting" the process of setting the parent of a to b, whereas one could look at b (the parent) parenting a, the child. It is a little confusing.
$\endgroup$
Feb 26 '18 at 17:52
Another way to think of it is to know that there is only one active object, but potentially many selected objects. Coupled with the fact that objects can have only one parent, Blender clearly must choose the active object to be the parent. With that in mind, you could expand the text to "Set the active object parent to the selected objects".
I must confess I normally think of it much like David describes and alternate (arguably more logical) interpretations had not occurred to me until I read this question.. Yet another example of normal, every-day english making no sense at all ;)
