Is there a way to offset the start of an animation driver?

Question

I have this object with the scale properties keyframed from 0 to 1. Now I want to apply the same animation to other identical objects by making this a driver for them in a way that the start of the scaling has a configurable offset for each individual object. I've already tried simply copying the keyframes and pasting them to other objects' scale properties but that didn't work. Obviously, I'm not savvy enough to make that work just like how things work in After Effects. Could anyone explain how this is possible?

Answer 1

one way doing this is using the NLA editor. Select your object with your scale animation.

Then open a window with NLA editor and one with dopesheet -> action editor like this:

first press the push down action button:

result:

now you can move this action on the timeline in the nla editor as you want. But later more.

Now first select your "new" object which should get the scaling animation, then shift-select the object with the scaling animation.

Press ctrl-L -> link animation data.

now you should see this:

now you can move the scaling animation on the timeline in the nla editor wherever you want: