Animating groups of objects

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi all:

I’ve got two questions. My goal is to animate a group of objects as a whole. In principle is a very simple action. Imagine you’ve got a car and a driver. And you want to move the car, and you dont want to have two IPO curves (one for the car and another for the driver). The obvious thing would be to join them, but the thing is that I want them to be separated. Besides, when I join meshes, depending on the material, sometimes the material can be modified. So my questions are:

  • How can I animate two different objects with a single IPO?
  • What am I doing wrong with the textures, that sometimes they go modified when joined to other meshes??

Thanks in advance!!!

www.enriquesahagun.es

2

Question 1:
A simple way is to parent the second object to the first one. For example select the driver and then the car (active) and press Ctrl+P for parenting. Now if you animate the Car the Driver will hold his position in respect to the car.
Question 2:
Perhaps you have used the ORCO Mapping for these textures. This way by joining the meshes the new object will have another sice and shape (means other coordinates in ORCO).To avoid this behaviour you could use UV Mapping

Pat