successfully unparent your child objects

as an maya beginner, i ran quite often into the problem that if i unparent an object it jumps to a weird location. the reason is quite simple: when you’re parenting the child “resets” its coordinates in relation to its parent. now if you lock the channels of the child (what it i did, but didn’t remember), the unparenting process will not function properly, as maya can’t set the original coordinates (thus relating its coordinates back to the world). so double check if you don’t have any channel locked (and/ or hidden) to assure that unparenting just as you’d expect. in general it is not advisable locking/ hiding channel for example during a rigging process: do this at the last possible moment, when you’re sure everything else works fine and you only want to clean things up.