Compound animations are not working

Symptoms

If one or more of these match what you are seeing, you are on the right page.

• •Two animations that work alone conflict when combined
• •The element ends up somewhere neither animation specified
• •Animation on a member appears to do nothing
• •Everything animates simultaneously when staggering was wanted

Causes and fixes

Ordered from most to least likely. Work down the list — each cause is paired with what to do about it.

1. 1

   Group and member transforms are compounding.

   They add rather than override — a circle at (100, 50) in a group moved to (200, 0) renders at (300, 50). Use group animation for macro moves and member animation for internal detail, and check both levels when the result is unexpected.

2. 2

   Every property shares the same keyframe times.

   Offset the tracks. Scale over frames 0–15, position over 0–45 and opacity over 5–20 reads as layered motion; all three over the same range reads as one robotic transition.

3. 3

   A property track is hidden or another is soloed.

   The eye toggle suppresses a track’s animation while keeping its keyframes, and soloing one track suspends all the others. Check both before assuming a keyframe is missing.

4. 4

   Parent inheritance is adding an unexpected transform.

   A child inherits its parent’s transform. Use a null object as a control, or Freeze Transform, when a child should not inherit everything.

5. 5

   Record Mode was off for part of the session.

   Changes made with it off apply across the whole timeline rather than at the playhead, which silently shifts the baseline every keyframe is relative to.

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