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I have a set of closely positioned objects. I want to make animation of spreading them along one axis with preferably equal gaps. I don't want to use parenting because i want to be able to rotate them freely around they centers later.

What is the simplest way to do this. Can it be achieved with animation nodes plugin or do i have to use only Blender animation curves and make all movements manually?

The following animation shows what i want to achieve with small number of objects.

moving parts

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2 Answers 2

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Two keyframes will suffice, if the centers of the objects are already spread out in the correct order.

  1. Check the manipulate center points button.
    manipulate center points
  2. ⇧ ShiftRMB RMB select the objects.
  3. Press I and choose Location to keyframe the location.
  4. Move the cursor in the timeline to the second position. I have the dopesheet open to see the created keyframes.
  5. Press S to scale the objects. Because of the Manipulate Center Points only button, the objects will only be moved, but not scaled. You can constrain the movent to a specific axis, by pressing S>X, S>Y or S>Z.
  6. Repeat 3 to insert a second keyframe.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ I would like to obtain gaps between objects of the same size. But this method does not guarantee this. How do I align objects after scalling? $\endgroup$
    – hal
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 14:52
  • $\begingroup$ 2,8x See Locations in transform tool settings. $\endgroup$
    – batFINGER
    Commented Dec 26, 2019 at 12:53
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe add another answer? This seems to be the missing piece for the quesiton. $\endgroup$
    – Leander
    Commented Dec 26, 2019 at 13:12
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When you need to rotate them as you wrote, use clear parent and keep transform. Unparented objects are your next keyframe.

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