How can I duplicate an object in an animation?

Question

It's my first time animating with blender and I'm having some troubles. I created this world, which has certain elements that need to be animated. I already had some animations done, when I realized that my world did not look finished yet. So I wanted to copy paste a few objects I already created in this file and place them somewhere else.

That doesn't work. I think it has to something with the keyframes, but whenever I duplicate something and press play the copied object is gone. I already tried replacing keyframes but it's not working. I can't get behind this.

Does anyone have a clue what might be going on? I would be very thankful for replys!! (i have a deadline soon)

Answer 1

I think what might be happening (although its hard to tell without the file) is that your object has animation data, and when you hit 'play' it is snapping back to the position key framed.

When you duplicate the object, place it where you want, then select all the keyframes and delete them. Does the object still 'disappear'?

Answer 2

As Bes Thomas says, the duplicated objects have inherited their action from the original, it may be the same action or a copy, depending on your preferences settings. To fix it, it all depends on what you want, if you don't want any animation for these objects, select them all and go into Object > Animation > Clear Keyframes. If each have a different action you could also create a new location keyframe with i: