Link an effect’s position to a Null’s position

[Michael Szalapski]

Yes; it is possible.
Alt-click the position of the expression and use the pick whip to choose the null’s position.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Jason Mckee]

Thanks. Not sure what was going on since I’ve used that same technique many times before but whatever it was it’s working now.

[Jason Mckee]

Got that working. I’ve used that technique many times before. Not sure what was going on with it but it’s working now. But my new question is… is it possible to link position, scale and rotation to an effect? I’ve got a null with tracking data and an effect on an adjustment layer. linking the adjustment layer to the null doesn’t do anything so I’m trying to link the effect. thanks.

[Pete Burges]

Sorry to Necro this thread but I thought it was better than starting another one…

In most cases, pickwhipping will work but sometimes it just won’t- for instance trying to link the source point in Trapcode Shine to a null (they’ve now included a link to null function, I know).
Linking start and end points of advanced lightning, or some gradient plugins doesn’t work either, at least not as expected. I’ve tried several setups for this, including parenting the linked nulls to the effect layer, using 3d nulls and using expressions to track null anchor points in comp space, but some effects just won’t respond to any of these.
I am assuming they are using some way other than comp space or layer position to get their coordinates, so can anyone shed some light on what they could be and suggest workarounds…?

[Michael Szalapski]

There’s a new feature in After Effects that makes tying the source point of an effect to null objects really easy. This video shows it off. (When the video was made, the feature was in beta, but it’s in the “shipping” version now.)

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.