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I'm wondering whether there is an equivalent functionality in Blender to simulate the way Flash let's you create object "instances" each of which encapsulates other objects and even animations. The key thing here is that you can have multiple instances of the outer object and if you change the internal setup, all instances will be updated on the main stage.

The motivation is that I'm trying to create in Blender an animation similar to a camera iris where each of the fins is an identical shape with an identical animation but with each instance rotated a certain amount.

Techniques like the duplication one here seem to only work with the outer most object in a parented stack: How can I duplicate a mesh along a curve?

And linked duplicates duplicate (w/o linking) the animation actions in the NLA editor.

Is this kind of encapsulation possible in Blender?

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Hari Honor
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  • Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/1734/599 – gandalf3 Apr 10 '14 at 09:24
  • What do you mean by "internal setup"? You can create objects duplicates with ALT + D. But I think you will need the help of an armature of bones to animate all instances. Or, you can use shapekeys to animate them in edit mode. – Polosson Apr 10 '14 at 11:17
  • You may also take a look here (it can be a good start clue): http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6023/how-to-make-a-circular-array-using-offset-object-as-center – Polosson Apr 10 '14 at 12:18
  • This tutorial might also be of help. – gandalf3 Apr 11 '14 at 06:35
  • Thanks. It seems that linked duplicates do share NLA actions after all. Parenting however still doesn't work with the duplication action. – Hari Honor Apr 11 '14 at 08:19
  • By "Internal setup" I mean: Say you have room with several fans. In flash you could have a Fan object that you double click to reveal a Blades object which you double click to reveal the layout of a series of Blade objects. If you double-clicked a Blade opening it's object and changed the shape, all the fans would be updated. It's kind of a more encapsulated version of Parenting + Linked Duplicates – Hari Honor Apr 11 '14 at 08:23

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