I'm not really that familiar with cycles textures, so there's probably something wrong there.
Anyway, my objects appear when I hit the 'render' button:
But not when I try the 'animation' render. All I get is my grid object and my lights.
I have another file with versions of the objects with the single basic node that appears when you first add a texture, and those will render in the animation render, but not the rest of them.
What am I doing wrong? Node setups are shown. File is here: click. All the objects are on the same render layer, and they're all set to display in the render.
EDIT: No issue to speak of here. I just forgot that nothing is in the render area until frame 17... I'm silly.