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JavaFX elements aligning right before animating

I'm developing a small GUI using JavaFX for an assignment. Having never used JavaFX before, most of what I've used or learned I've research myself. Most of my application runs smoothly, animations included.
I have a small user input section:
I'm trying to allow it to swipe left prior to loading the next scene, to give the user the impression of sequence. I achieved this using a ParallelTransition populated by TranslationTransitions in which I load all of these Nodes.
However, just slightly before it animates, it appears to align everything right.
I have a feeling this is something to do with the container (AnchorPane) in which I'm placing these objects, or some undefined attribute which I'm not setting. As I'm learning this all on the fly, it's a bit difficult to narrow down. Can anyone give me an idea as to what is causing this and how I can retain the alignment? Each Node moves in the following way:
translateTransition.setFromX(node.getLayoutX());
translateTransition.setToX(node.getLayoutX()-500.00);
If I've left out any pertinent information, please let me know!

So, my issue turned out to be the way I'm laying out my objects. Placing them in an arbitrary AnchorPane with only specific attributes to locate those items means that, upon animation, it will group those objects and animate them accordingly. It was the incorrect way to layout those nodes.
Instead, I've placed them in a VBox which has two advantages.
I can align the contents of that VBox centre, so I need not specify the exact layout attributes of the elements.
I can animate using the single VBox, as opposed to the all the elements in a ParallelTransition. As a result, a single TranslateTransition on the VBox node will suffice!

Using multiple models as one

I want to have one model that can be customised with different parts eg. Different arm models or different head models. I want them to all be different models (one for the head, body, one for each arm and one for each leg) and then have them all pieced together and rendered to look like one complete model. How could I implement this into my project using lwjgl and OpenGL?

There are a few ways that I could think of that would work, some of them touching on the concept of Skeletal Animation.
First, you could use your modeling software (for example, blender) and add all of the components into the scene individually, then just read in the whole scene into your game.
Another way of going about this would be to try to give each component the role of a bone, then use a skeleton structure to link all the bones together. The only problem with this is that you're going to have to create your own variables for the skinning formula.
Lastly, you could load them all into a scene in your modeling software, link them with joints, then export that into your game. This would be my choice since it would give you all the information you need to perform the skinning formula, which will give you the ability to animate the components of your structure.

Programming with a Java MVC approach using NetBeans GUI builder

I've been tasked with making a GUI that essentially takes a bit of user input and does some folder/file manipulation on various drives accessible by the machine the program is being run on. While designing this GUI, I'm starting to realize that MVC will make my life much easier and anyone else who decides to modify code, but I can't really see how this can be done via NetBeans.
I've done a bit of reading up on this topic, and I can't really see any clear cut answers as to whether or not this can be done on NetBeans. Surely it can be done if I programmatically build the GUI, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of why I chose to use NetBeans.

Netbeans is fine to do this.
The key thing to realize is that while all of the basic Swing components are MVC, for the most part you don't interact with them that way. A simple text field has it internal model, but that model isn't your model, the text field is more a primitive.
Your model deals with higher level events (button actions and what not), rather than button presses and arrow moves and mouse clicks.
So, for high level MVC, the primary mechanism of communication is through PropertyChangeListeners. And the basic task of building your app up is wiring the PCLs of the assorted data elements along with their GUI components together.
For example, a simple case is you have a list of items. And that list is rendered on the screen via a JTable, and that table is on a JPanel.
Your list has it's own model, i.e. it's not simply a Java List. It's not a List because standard Java Lists don't support PCL notifications. But your Model would obviously wrap such a List.
Now, the next question is how do you wire up JTable to be associated with your List model.
One, you could subclass JTable and bind it to your Model. Or, more simply, you use the JTable as a primitive, and let the enclosing JPanel manage the interaction between your Model and the JTable.
That means having your JPanel implement PropertyChangeListener, and then, when wiring everything up, you do something like this:
ListModel myModel = new ListModel();
ListPanel myPanel = new ListPanel();
myModel.addPropertyChangeListener(myPanel);
Now, whenever your ListModel is changed, is will notify the ListPanel.
On your ListPanel you can having something like:
#Override
public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent evt) {
if (evt.getPropertyName().equals(ListModel.CHANGED)) {
ListModel model = (ListModel) evt.getSource();
DefaultTableModel tm = (DefaultTableModel) listTable.getModel();
tm.setRowCount(0);
for (String s : model.getList()) {
tm.addRow(new Object[]{s});
}
}
}
Now, you can see this simply reloads the entire table model, but you can make your property changes as fine grained as you want. You can also see that if this was some other model (like a Person or something) you can populate individual text fields and whatnot on the panel.
This is a pretty simple GUI, but it shows the fundamentals of how this all wires together. I think a bit of this is lost in the Swing examples which are great for one panel screens but don't scale at all when you start adding other views.
Your JPanels basically become combined VC, as your GUI gains complexity you can factor those kinds of things out, but its works pretty well for reasonable amounts of screens and such.

There are two ways in which Netbeans can help you leverage its codebase: GUI Builder (1) and NB Platform (2).
(1) Netbeans had for a while one of the better drag-n-drop GUI builders in the Java world, codenamed Matisse.
That said, it's been a long time since I worked with it - and I never really liked the generated code, it wasn't very comprehensible (which of course is not the purpose of auto-generated code). For more complex UIs we hand-wrote the layout and the work was bearable, even if not the most pleasant. For simple UIs, I'd try GUI Builder again, for complex UIs with a lot of wired logic, I'd probably still would write it by hand.
To see how the GUI Builder works, take a look at one of the many tutorial videos, e.g. this one:
NetBeans GUI Builder: Adding Components
(2) Netbeans Platform is to Netbeans, what RCP is to Eclipse. A rich set of components developed for an IDE, that can be reused. I briefly looked into NB Platform and we would have used it, if the project didn't change course. Maybe this SO question can shed more light on this aspect: Which Rich Client Platform to use?.
Concerning MVC. There was JSR 296, a generic Swing Application Framework, that looked somewhat promising, but was withdrawn in 2011. That did not stop people to fork it and work on it, as this project shows: Better Swing Application Framework, with a release in mid 2012. Even if you do not use such a framework, please do not put all code in one class (as you mention in you comment), but create a simple model/controller and keep the UI components separate. It does not need to be fancy for a simple app, a minimal MVC-ish separation of concerns might suffice.

I also hit this problem and i found a link which gives a good example how to seperate the controller from the view using the NetBeans GUI builder.
Here is the link.

Multiple Page Development in Java with Eclipse and GWT

I have been writing some basic code for an application I am designing. I have learned the basics and gotten some simple database connection working with RPC calls etc. What I need to do now and am completely lost (as I am traditionally a c# developer with windows forms).
In c# if I wanted a new form I would just create it, and then call the show method.
How does one create multiple pages in GWT, and switch between them?
Thanks in advance,
Chris

The simplest way would be to
Make a new java class (GwtHome.java, GwtHelp.java etc)
Extend these classes by using the Composite class
Make the equivalent of a Master Page and add it to the rootPanel as a class with the appropriate headers, menu, footer and Content Placeholder (Could be any of the AbsolutePanel, VerticalPanel, HorizontalPanel objects provided by the GWT Framework)
By clicking on the menu clear the Placeholder and add the appropriate object of GwtHome, GwtHelp etc.
After getting aquanted with the above procedure, you might want to break up the code in many files using a design pattern as suggested by Andrei.

Simply clear the root panel (RootPanel.get().clear()) and add the widget for your new "page", the same way you added your first one.
If you're using LayoutPanels, do RootLayoutPanel.get().clear() instead.

Look at Activities and Places design pattern: https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideMvpActivitiesAndPlaces
I highly recommend it for a multipage GWT app. It explains pretty well how you create different "views", that are driven by their "activities", and tied to specific "places" (pages) that users can navigate.
Typically you use a LayoutPanel as your "page" container that occupies the entire available browser window. You split this LayoutPanel into 2-3 layers (zones), like top menu, side menu, main area. Each area contains one widget, usually a ScrollPanel, FlowPanel, or HtmlPanel. Then you use different widgets or HTML inside each of these widgets to display whatever you need. You may also create your own composite widgets that you can reuse in different pages.

UI for an intended XSL-FO designer in Java

I intend to write a XSL-FO designer in java for which i need to write an UI. The basic idea is to give the user a work pane wherein he/she can draw rectangles and these rectangles would in turn be associated to field containers in the underlying XSL-FO generator. Once the field container are done, the user should also be able to select any of the rectangles(field containers) created and add components into it. These will in turn be translated into field blocks that fall under the chosen field container.
Till now I have created a simple UI using JFames with mouseListeners hooked to them so that i can have users draw the rectangles on the work area.
Im stuck at the point on how to implement the part where the user selects one of the rectangles created in the previous steps.
Given the intent of the designer, is it possible to accomplish this using Jframes ?
Any pointers/suggestions on how i can achieve the motive of this designer would be of great help !
Please excuse me if any part of this post is noobish. I am one when it comes to UI.

JInternalFrame might be a starting point. You can connect them, as shown here, and add arbitrary components as required.