Suppose I’ve animated an object by moving it around and setting various keyframes. Then I decide I want to animate the rotation of the object. I want the rotation point to be at one end of the object but during all the movement animation, the grab handle was in the middle of the object.
If I just relocate the grab handle from the middle to the edge, all my previous movement animation will be affected.
Can I reposition the grab handle without affecting previous animation of the object?
I’ve made that mistake more than once where I realized after animating the location of something, that I would be better off with the grab point somewhere else, either for future rotation or scaling.
One way to solve this:
Go to the start frame of the object’s animation.
Add an empty and place it at the origin of the object, parent the object to the empty.
In the NLA Editor: Push down the object action (this would be the translation anim made so far), then delete the Action (so the object isn’t animated anymore)
Select the empty. Change Dopesheet to ActionEditor, choose the translation anim by clicking on the ‘Browse Action to be linked’ button on the ActionEditor Menu bar. Now the Empty will be animated the same as the object was before.
Change the origin of the object as desired for further rotational animation (place Cursor, then Shift-Ctrl-Alt-C)…