Object Duration

[Sualdam]

I'm trialling the free version and will purchase if I can achieve what I am trying to do.

What I am want is to have a particular image (of a car) follow a route through a background image of a road layout. To achieve the correct rotation of the car as it turns corners it looks like I will have to have separate instances of the car with separate timelines for each section of the drive through at the turns in order to make it look natural. It looks like this will work except for one thing.

I can set the duration in my test animation of the first instance of the car travelling along an animation path. This duration is from 0s to 7s. In the next frame, the car disappears, as you'd expect.

But when I try to establish a duration for a second animation instance of the car doing a small turn over a shorter distance (2s), the problem is that it also has a duration starting from 0s, which means it is visible while the previous animation is taking place. What I need is to have the first animation running 0-7s, and the second one running 7-9s (or whatever I eventually decide to get a suitable animation).

So the question is: can you specify how to set a time range for the duration of an animation which doesn't start at 0s? I'll be darned if I can see how to do it.

An alternative would be to delete empty frames up to the first keyframe - and I can't see how to do that, either.

Any help gratefully received. I did check the other forum posts and saw nothing relevant to what I am asking, and I have watched the videos (which got me to where I am now).

[rcf-jr]

Sualdam, This question seems to be similar to another one ask before, except there was no need to have more than one object represent the "car'. The view of the road layout was a birds-eye-view. If this is your situation, then go take a look at "Animating a 45 and a 90 deg turn of a rectangle" in this forum. There, the same object of a car is used throughout the layout. But if you are looking to work with an orthographic projection view, that is a different animal all together. 

After you look at the other forum post "Animating a 45 and a 90 deg turn of a rectangle" and that is not offering the answers you need, let us know more details and the perspective view you want to work in. If you have a YouTube account you can export what you have and upload it as a PRIVATE video to your YouTube account and share the link with us in your next post. Then we can see first hand what you are trying to do.  Happy animating...

[Fred28]

You can also try reaching NCH Tech team if you need assistance: https://www.nch.com.au/support/index.html