Using empties vs using existing objects as parents

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#1

Quick question; as the title suggests …

In this particular case, my intuition was to pick the “propellor base” as parent, with the three blades as children. Are there significant benefits here of using an empty and parenting the three blades and the base to this empty?

My feeling is that, in this case, it’s more of a “habbit” or “what you’re used to”, and it doesn’t really make much of a difference?

I can imagine that there are other examples where it’s not that straightforward, or where the parent empty actually helps with animation (when it acts as a “hinge” for its children to rotate around, for instance) …

#2

Empties help visualise any rotations. Yes there are times when an object is suitable and a part of the lecture was probably designed to introduce and teach about empties. It might be for example the object changes look if rotated, so not useful.

Empties are very handy to know about.

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#3

Yes, it depends on the case you are working. But also your preferences.

I do use EMPTIES a lot, especially when rotation is involved.

  • An empty can act as the center point of the construction like it is 0,0,0
  • If you rotate an object it’s something difficult to reset to the original location, rotation, and scale (when working with meshes), Empties can help with this (to reset).
  • Empties can be used to group. In a different way than Collections.
  • Empties can be used to manipulate material nodes and or geo-node.

So much uses for those invisible objects as EMPTIES.

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#4

Thanks all :slight_smile: I definitely didn’t want to understate the importance of empties, in what I’ve seen before from Blender I do realize that they can be really powerful.

I’m not entirely convinced in this particular case but it will have to sink in some more (and, with some more complex examples I’m sure I’ll get a better view). Reading the answers and thinking about it though, what I actually do like about the empties, though, is as @NP5 mentions (or so I interpret it), that it helps visualize …

Where I would think an object-object relation could be useful for more “static” set-up (object A is attached to object B and it should follow, but it isn’t meant to really animate), an object-empty relation may look visually better when animating :thinking: The “circle” in the lecture nicely visualizes that there’s a rotation that’s intended to be allowed there; and the “axes” on the plane body show that that’s something that can be moved anywhere, which is very clear in the scene (rather than having to look at the hierarchy to figure out what the “main/base” part of related objects really is).

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#5
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