How Create a Circle Burst Animation?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’m trying to create an animation like the one shown in this AE turorial: https://youtu.be/wPFdak9dYbE?t=13s

Of course I could achieve this via brute force: Create every element separately and animate each. But I’m trying to figure a simpler, repeatable and reusable method.

I’ve tried:
Array Modifier - but this breaks down when trying to apply an action to each of the elements. While the elements are rotated correctly, they share the same rotation data as the original so they don’t follow the circle geometry when animated.

Duplicate on Vertices - I can get all elements to scale together in different ways by moving the origin point of the original. But I can’t animate their position to burst from the circle nor can I access each element (so no offsetting).

Perhaps a plug-in is what I need. I was looking at Atom’s plug-ins, but they seem to be unavailable until he re-releases them. Otherwise, would the new MotionTools do this easily?

Love to hear any ideas. Thanks,
SB

Thanks,
Scott

2

So here are my musings on creating the circle bursts

Using DupliFrames - Not great because objects share same rotate orientation/animation as original.

DupliVerts - Can rotate each from vertice vector but can’t duplicate animation. They all move together!

Snap To Face - <SOLVED> This works great. The objects are rotated correctly around a circle AND you can animate them!
[video]https://youtu.be/OxpFslKnmIY[/video]

Particle Burst - <SOLVED> This is powerful too. Easily duplicated with changes to particles or emitter. However, it seems you are restricted to only the animations in the particle settings. BUT - You CAN animate shape keys of the objects.
MY WISH - Create an animated object - Use that object as a particle and have the particle engine duplicate the objects animation as well.
[video]https://youtu.be/3uVuDtBo3b8[/video]

I hope this is helpful to others.

Cheers,
SB