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I have six objects that would like to control the Location, Rotation, and Scale of each sequentially. An Effector would be perfectly suitable for this. When I place the Objects in a group, I can Control Loc/Rot/Sca on all simultaneously.

There are several tutorials on how to what I want with text or arrays of elements. None of the examples manipulate different objects that have been grouped together. I came accross a post in this forum "Animation Nodes - Have an effector control the rotation of many objects" that looked promising; unfortunately when I use "Loop Input" the Matrix Input goes transparent on the "Object Matrix Output".

enter image description here

Thank you for your help!

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Most nodes of Animation Nodes 2 were vectorized, which means that most nodes work on a list of values without using a loop. This applies to the Object ID Key node as well as the Matrix Output node.

Instead of feeding the From Group node into a loop to extract the initial transformations individually from each object, you can feed the From Group directly into the Object ID Key node and it will give you a list of all initial transformations automatically. Then you can feed the list – again without using a loop – into the Offset Matrix node to receive a list of all transformed matrices.

node setup

You only have to make sure that

  • the origin of each letter is close to the letter so that the object controller falloff can correctly calculate how far away the letters are from the controller. Merely separating the letters of a text object will keep the origins at the location of the original text object.
  • And each letter has the initial transforms stored. The Initial transforms for an object can be stored in the tool panel shown in the image below.

tool panel for initial transforms

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    $\begingroup$ Note that IDs needn't be used. One can use Delta Transforms. $\endgroup$
    – Omar Emara
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 8:35
  • $\begingroup$ Binweg, Thank you! I feel I am near, but it is not working just yet. As soon as I connect the "Objects (from group)" to the "Objects (Matrix Output)" all the letters are set to the same origin (letters are stacked on top of each other). When I created the group, I when to each letter and I Set Origin - Origin to Geometry Center. The hit ctrl - A (Apply Locations). Also tried to Apply All Transforms to Deltas. What am I missing? $\endgroup$
    – MikeA
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 13:59
  • $\begingroup$ I assume that you didn't store the initial transforms for each letter, which doesn't happen automatically. I've added a description of how to do that in the answer. If you moved the origin after you've stored the initial transforms then you might have to update them as they would still be at the original location. If that doesn't solve the problem, maybe you could upload your blend file, as I'm not sure what else could cause the problem. HTH $\endgroup$
    – binweg
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 18:29
  • $\begingroup$ Apply Locations sets the origin to the center of the world, this is something binweg warned you about in his answer. $\endgroup$
    – Omar Emara
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 19:20
  • $\begingroup$ Binweg, I tried the "From Current Transforms" and it still didn't work. So I started new. Created the letters out of "Cubes", stored the transforms, and now its working. Thank you very much for your guidance. $\endgroup$
    – MikeA
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 20:24

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