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So I want to animate a plant growing. Is there a way to control the animation of a particular parameter based on how long a particular element has existed? For instance, how would I go about animating leafs unfurling as the main trunk/stem grows? If I try to animate the parameters, I can make the unfurling animation without much effort, but as the stem grows new leaves "appear" and they appear at whatever point in the animation sequence the rest of the leaves are at. This is obviously not realistic. They should unfurl individually, not as a set. The above is a demonstration of what happens. You can see that the leaves start tightly wound, and unfurl. The problem is, new leaves appear already unfurled or in the process thereof. I would prefer if each leaf, as it appears, starts from the beginning and unfurls individually. I don't know how to time that without manually placing and animating every leaf. I'm not intimately knowledgeable of 3ds max's animation tools, but I know particles can be controlled by age, so I was wondering if GrowFX elements could be...?