Parenting is Breaking Animation I am animating a locomotive which is an a 3rd party model with wheels and brackets that were animated - which I'd like to keep. However, it was done strangely, and the parenting relationship is hard to follow.

I've already fixed it partly, and the train animation runs fine, but any kind of additional parenting to animate the train in motion breaks the local animation of the wheels turning and brackets pumping.

I have tried parenting the whole lot to an empty to animate that, but as soon as it is animated the local animation breaks. 


Parenting the wheels and brackets to the chassis is causing parenting loops
Joining also breaks the animation - but not all the time. I joined the locomotive to the carriages and it did preserve the animation but I lost my UVs (which have been carefully modified).
Doing it the "wrong way round" also doesn't work. Setting the trains as the Parent and making the empty the child is not working. Something about the parent child relationships int he mechanisms is being thrown off.


I can't be alone in this boat...
So I think I have figured it out...I managed to track down the empty that was the parent of "some" of the brackets and wheels. It was just an orange point, but once THAT was parented to the empty in front of the train and the train body (the parent of everything else) was hooked up - it all worked. Gee what a head scratcher.