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So I'm trying to animate a solar system with planets progressively being less and less influenced by the sun's rotation as they stand further and further away. I set an empty object where the sun is, attached all the planets to the controller with a Child of constraints and a Pivot constraint linked to the controller as well, and tweaked the influences; for instance, the closest planet has a influence of 1, the furthest 0.2.

Since I want the planets to do a full circle, I need the sun to rotate something like 3600°. Unfortunately, every time it passes 180°, every object snaps back to its original location (except for the one with its influence set to 1).

Is there something I'm not doing right or is that a limitation of Blender? is there a way around it? (I don't know anything about animating in Blender). The version in 3.1. Thank you!

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  • $\begingroup$ pls upload a simplified version of your solar system in which the problem still persist, so we can check it out. thank you. $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Jun 23, 2022 at 10:43

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No, you should use drivers for that.

  1. create empty in center and parent a planet to it:

enter image description here

  1. Duplicate to add more planets

enter image description here

  1. Add control empty:

enter image description here

  1. Press RMB on Z rotation of control empty and select "Copy as new driver"

  2. Paste drivers in the empties of the planet's in Z rotation (RMB ⇾ Paste driver), values will become pink:

enter image description here

  1. In context menu, select Edit driver. Set type to scripted expression, and in expression set rotation_euler*0.3 (multiply by your coefficient).

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you! I ended up going that route, indeed, following a clock animation tutorial: youtube.com/watch?v=vRif78aoHf0 $\endgroup$
    – Zealot
    Jun 23, 2022 at 12:22
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    $\begingroup$ Just to elaborate on why you can't use the Child Of constraint as you planned: constraints' factors are to be considered as a ratio between your object's state with and without the constraint. When you set a frame to be 50%, it's not "50% from the previous frame", it's actually "50% from no constraint on the same frame". $\endgroup$
    – L0Lock
    Jun 23, 2022 at 13:07

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