Animation Not Working Right

I finished creating my animation, but the center of the gear and the gear itself separate once they get to the top and bottom of the object it is rotating in. The objects are grouped together, but for some reason they stop rotating together at the end points.Rotary to linear Gear.3dm (653.7 KB)

As a rule, I do not use Groups for animations. Use Blocks instead. Blocks create single objects with a single insertion point. This makes them easy to animate.

Groups are like names selection sets of many objects. So, in animation, you would need to deal with them as separate objects. You might still need to select the sub objects as children in a parent child relationship.

By creating Blocks first, you will see the animation tree becomes much simpler and the behavior predictable.

Removing ‘3D tweening’ for the gear will avoid that.

I recommend avoiding groups COMPLETELY when animating. The reason is that if you ever un-group (to change a material) the animation is gone, and will need to be re-done.

Have you tried the proxy point? That’s the best way I have found to organize all of the geometry. You first make a proxy point, select all of its ‘children-geometry,’ and then animate the proxy. Later, you can still select individual pieces of geometry and even add more ‘children’ to the ‘proxy-parent.’