Starting an animation on the birth of a particle or using animation nodes? I have a problem with the particle system.

Context:

I have a cube that emits particles. On another layer, I have 3 objects that change shape over time. I group the 3 objects and use the group in the particle system. The result is that the emitter emits the objects using the timeline to drive the grouped objects animation. That is logical.

Question:

What I am looking to do is have the objects start their animation sequence when they are emitted from the emitter, not based on the timeline. So that as each object is born, the animation is seen individually. The particle system gives me a very natural particle animation that I like, it is just that I cannot control when the grouped object animation starts.

I have had a look at the AN tutorials and I am struggling to understand. I figure that if I can create an AN animation for each object, maybe one of the particle nodes can drive the birth of the animation.

I would be very grateful for any thoughts.
Solution

This can easily be achieved by subtracting the birth time of each particle form the time input of the required animation.

Lets assume that your animation is a simple 180 turn around the z axis, then I can just generate the rotations as follows:



What happens is when you subtract the birth time of the particle, the time of the animation becomes zero at the time of its birth and it linearly and continuously increases. Other complex and advances animations and scenarios can be achieved on the bases of the previously described concept.

Appendix

In case you don't know how to make a group like particle system, here is a simple a node tree that does exactly that: