How to scale an object relative to a moving Empty's coordinate system? I'm trying scale an object relative to a moving Empty's coordinate system.

I tried applying the "child of"-constraint to the object and scaling the Empty.

If I tick both the scaling and location options, the scaling happens as desired but when I move the Empty, the object moves along with it. I want the object to stay in place. 

If I tick only the scaling option, it will no longer move with the Empty but now the scaling happens relative to the object's local coordinate system. Not what i want.
You were right with your initial intuition about using a Child-of Constraint.

Here is the somewhat limited method of sucking in an object by scaling an Empty that the Child-of Constraint is using:



The limitation with the method described above is that moving the Empty also relocates the object, even when the "suck-in" effect is not being used.

The solution to this is to keep the Empty scaled down to zero all the time and instead use the Influence Slider to control the effect. The Influence Slider can of course be keyframed for animation.



Tip: Enabling "Display: All Object Origins", and also using the Outliner can be helpful for selecting objects in their scaled-to-zero state.

Download the .blend here:

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/2892/