How to animate translucency of a material per object individually?

Question

I want to create a video with animated text in Blender 2.8 (beta). I have 3 words (individual text objects) of which the locations are animated with keyframes. They slide in next to each other. As part of that slide animation their opacity should fade from none to full.

I found out how to animate the material (surface: emission) color which unfortunately animates it globally for all objects using it. I need the opacity fading individually for each object. I would like to avoid creating individual materials because there will be a lot of text objects.

Answer 1

You can add a Transparent shader and mix to your diffuse.

Now you can animate the Mix shader factor (use the shortcut I ).

See the image below:

Answer 2

First, i will add an object index. It will control witch object will be first, second ets..

Object index are located in Object settings, Relations tab:

Blender haven't logic nodes, so i build it by myself, using simple math nodes:

then i group it Ctrl+G:

And finally, i can reuse it:

Then you can animate Color or Strength or any outer values as you want