How can I make one object affect the z-axis transformation of another object?

Question

(Sorry for the confusing title, I didn't know how to explain this)

I have a sphere and a lot of tiles in a scene:

I want all the tiles to move up and down when the sphere gets close to them:

I tried to use a driver on the tiles, but instead of all the specific tiles moving when the sphere got close to them, they just mirrored the location of the sphere:

I'm not sure if drivers are the best way to do this, if it isn't, please let me know how I can do this!

Thanks Daniel

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/153177/worms-crawling-under-skin/153181 — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Jul 18 '21 at 15:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 18 '21 at 16:50

I think you were very close, If you added driver for the tiles z location to copy it from the sphere, you need to create an "fallof" effect - Open driver editor add input variable, change it's type to distance, in the expression now you can divide position value by distance value. To make the fallof effect stronger/weaker divide/multiply the distance by some constant value. Keep in mind that when the distance will be between 0:1 then you will divide position by a fraction - which means it will actually exaturate it, so to keep it on a safe side, you can simply add 1 to your distance/strength_factor.

Since he has no distance in his driver, to provide a good answer it would be best to tell him how to get the distance. — Gordon Brinkmann, Jul 19 '21 at 06:44

How can I make one object affect the z-axis transformation of another object?

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