Invictus

Despite being inspired by the Tech Talks presentation on dynamic constraints, I am unable to reproduce any of the effects there with v13. Please correct me if I am missing a critical step or two: 1. I make a chain of three bones inside a simple tube of CPs. I assign the CPs to the bones. 2. I open an action with this model. 3. I translate the top bone back and forth in a couple of keyframes. 4. I return to frame 0, click on the lowest bone, and right click => new constraint => dynamic constraint 5. I still have an animation of a stiff three-bone stick moving back and forth. No swinging. Stiffness is set to 50% by default. If I try to change this value, it jumps back to 50% automatically. In fact, all of the dynamic options properties jump back to their defaults if I try to change them. Why is everything frozen? When am I supposed to see the effects of the contraint? What am I doing wrong?

Can someone point me in the right direction for an explanation on how to use constraints to have an actor grab and hold objects in his hand? I have his fingers wrapped around the object (in my case, the hilt of a sword). Do I have to constrain the hilt bone to the hand or finger bones or vice versa? Do I use translate to and/or kinematic constraints? Nothing I try seems to get the object to stick in its original position. For example, the hilt of the sword jumps to the outside of the hand.