Shooting with Three Trebuchets

Question

What is the correct way to organize the animation of this scene? Three similar trebuchets (A, B and C) are available. The trebuchet file is attached in the question "Trebuchet Rigid Body". The trebuchet is a set of objects from the Rigid Body and Cloth physics simulations. The trebuchets must move one by one in the direction of the arrows and start the shooting animation. The plan for the animation is as follows.

Frame #1 - Frame #30: Linear movement of Trebuchet A (one body forward). Frame #32: Start of Trebuchet A shooting animation.

Frame #51 - Frame #80: Linear movement of Trebuchet B (one body forward). Frame #82: Start of Trebuchet B shooting animation.

Frame #101 - Frame #130: Linear movement of Trebuchet C (one body forward). Frame #132: Start of Trebuchet C shooting animation.

I'm having trouble combining linear motion animation and physics simulations. Blender version 3.0 (Non-commercial, educational project).

Answer 1

here is the basic instructions how to combine rigid body animation and "manual" animation.

The important settings is "Animated":

Note: You cannot have both: Manual/animated animation AND rigid body physics, but you can change it each frame.

So here is a very simple setup:

i have a cube animated with two location keyframes:

On first and second keyframe, the cube will be lifted up in the air.

on the second keyframe, animated (on) is keyframed:

on the third keyframe, animated (off) is keyframed, so that gravity starts working and the cube falls by itself (gravity).

result:

Note: Blender is "clever". It keeps the speed the animated object has and "combines" this with rigid body physics. So the cube doesn't straight fall down but "flies" a bit further because of its initial speed.