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My goal is to keep an object level to the ground, following the arc of its parent when I rotate the parent (a Bezier circle curve). At the moment, the object rotates with the parent, even if I lock the rotation parameters (or perhaps maybe technically it doesn't rotate relative to the parent, but I need it to rotate such that it stays level relative to the world). I have tried to apply various constraints, such as "follow" and "copy location" but just have not found the right combination. I don't need to animate this, just to rotate on demand, preferably by rotating the circle.

Please see the attached image to get a visual of what I would like to accomplish. I would like the object to go from A to B, staying level the whole time, following the arc of the circle, changing only it's Z position/location.

Thank you for reading! I would appreciate any advice you could offer.

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Here is a setup that works: Parent an empty to the sphere, put the cube at the same location as the empty, give a Copy Location to the cube with the empty as Target:

enter image description here

If you rotate the sphere here is what it gives:

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes! Thank you so much for the quick, helpful, detailed reply and example. Not sure exactly why it works, but it definitely works! $\endgroup$
    – Robert
    Jan 26 at 20:28
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    $\begingroup$ It works because Copy Location doesn't take the rotations into account ;) $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Jan 26 at 20:30
  • $\begingroup$ Sure, makes sense. And I tried copy location with just the curve as parent, but it seems like the empty is required in order for it to behave how I expected. $\endgroup$
    – Robert
    Jan 26 at 20:41
  • $\begingroup$ yes because if you rotate the curve, its location will stay the same, so the child won't move $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Jan 26 at 20:47
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, yes, of course. Thank you! $\endgroup$
    – Robert
    Jan 26 at 21:56

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