With the Commotion Addon we can make offset animations. We can also use an effector that drives the animation by proximity.
In the past I tried the addon a few times but never got the hang of it. But finally I got it sorted out and want to share you my experience. To show you how it works, I made the video below. And in case you have no access to the video, I will give some tips below.
Let’s start with a simple example. Once we get this clear, we can then go further. Simple example:
In case you cannot watch the video and you want more examples, let me know. There is one thing that I cannot get to work and that is to bake the Proximity Effector properly. If you know why the empty doesn’t bake, let me know.
You can download the Commotion Addon on Github. Installation of the addon is as usual. It has an update:Animation Offset: new option Selected Only, when enabled only selected keyframes or strips get affected. And a fix: Animation Utils: Fix error in Copy and Convert to when dealing with NLA strips.