Copy Location Constraint

The Copy Location constraint forces its owner to have the same location as its target.

Important

Note that if you use such a constraint on a connected bone, it will have no effect, as it is the parent’s tip which controls the position of your owner bone’s root.

Options

../../../_images/animation_constraints_transform_copy-location_panel.png — Copy Location panel.

Target: Data ID used to select the constraints target, and is not functional (red state) when it has none. See common constraint properties for more information.
Axis: These buttons control which axes are constrained.
Invert: Invert their respective corresponding axis coordinates.
Offset: When enabled, this control allows the owner to be moved (using its current transform properties), relative to its target’s position.
Target/Owner: Standard conversion between spaces. See common constraint properties for more information.
Influence: Controls the percentage of affect the constraint has on the object. See common constraint properties for more information.

Examples

Animation

Let us animate a solar system with the Copy Location constraint and its Offset option. You can make the owner, called “moon”, describe perfect circles centered on the world origin (using e.g. Location X/Y sine and cosine F-curves, see Built-in Function Modifier). Then copy the location of a target “earth” with the Offset checkbox enabled to model a satellite in a (simplified) orbit around its planet. Repeat these steps for more planets circling around its center star “sun”.

Following video is a small animation of a solar system created using (among a few others) the previously described technique:

Note that, this ‘solar’ system is not realistic at all (the wrong scale, the earth is rotating in the wrong direction around the sun, …).

You can download the blend-file used to create this animation.

Furthermore you can also animate a few properties of each constraint using animation curves: e.g. you can animate the Influence of a constraint. It is used to first let the camera follow the moon, then the earth, and finally using two Copy Location constraints with Offset set.