• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Parenting a layer, using ONLY expressions?

  Posted by Vince Lund on September 9, 2010 at 10:25 am

  Hi There,

  This is my first post, I hope someone can help me out here.

  I have two layers, currently linked together using the Parent pick-whip. Moving, scaling or rotating the first layer affects the other layer.

  What I want to do is NOT use the parent layer option, and INSTEAD use a set of expressions applied to the Pos, Rot, and Scale properties of the second layer. But I can’t work out what expressions to use, so as to exactly mimic the Parent Layer property.

  The reason for this is that I want to dynamically change the parent of the layer, at certain times – ie, for first few seconds, layer follows Null 01, for next few seconds layer follows Null 02, and so on…

  Any help would be appreciated!

  Thanks,

  Vince Lund replied 15 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Nick Hill

  September 9, 2010 at 1:19 pm

  You can do something like –

  (layer’s position property)

  L = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”); // rename for your null
  L.transform.position;

  (rotation)

  L = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”);
  L.transform.rotation;

  etc.

  But then you’d need to add extra complexity to it to handle the switchover – and if the nulls are in different positions the layer would jump.

  A better solution might be to parent Null 2 to Null 1, and the layer to Null 2. Then just move one null at once.
• 

  Vince Lund

  September 11, 2010 at 9:31 am

  Thanks, however this would just set my position to the same as the other null’s position… I need it to ‘follow’ from it’s own position, not move directly to a new position.

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