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Moving the anchor point without moving a layer’s location
I was wondering if there is a tool that I can use to move a layer’s anchor point without moving the layer’s location, like you can do in Illustrator, where one can change the anchor point with the rotation tool, for example.
I am animating a character and when I change the anchor point of the arm, for example, then, I have to re-position the arm again in its former location. It is kind of double work… It should be a way to do it without this extra work of re-locating the element position…
D.
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5 Replies
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Use the Pan Behind tool. It looks kind of like this:
[o]
or, keyboard shortcut = Y
Dan
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Ok, but what if I want to move the anchor point with out moving the layer AND I need it to hit a precise location?
Basically, I’m bring many layers into a comp and I need them to “land” in an exact location with their anchor points being the same as well (so they will scale the same). Punching in numbers would be exact – using the “pan behind tool” is just a rough guess.
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Sorry, I don’t know of a way of doing this but if anyone does it’ll be really useful. Particularly for 3D layers where using the pan behind shifts the anchors zpos
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this is something that should be build into after effects but you could use this expression as a work around. (it’s a bit crude maybe someone can make it better).
on a 2d solid’s position property put this:
a = transform.anchorPoint;
p = transform.position;x = p[0]+(a[0]-50);
y = p[1]+(a[1]-50);[x,y]
You’ll need to put the anchor points starting position in place of the 50s (for example on a default 1920×1080 solid you’ll need to put 960 and 540)
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use a null object and parent all layers to it.
If you want all pieces to stay in their original position, bring in the comp into a new layer and work inside that comp to mess with layers individually (or make that comp your main comp)
Un-precompose plug-in is helpful too with these situations. Google it.
Hope this helps -
You definitely want to have this
https://www.batchframe.com/extras/info/Move%20Anchor%20PointFree and one of the most useful scripts I’ve ever had 🙂
Enjoy!!!
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