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Non-uniform scale?
Hi,
every time I’d like to scale a simple Solid or whatever else in After Effects CS4 with the Selection Tool, it scales around the centered Anchor point, uniformly.
However, the manual says “To scale a layer freely in the Composition panel, drag a corner layer handle.” It only works for me once I put the Anchor to the upper left corner, then I can resize elements to fit to other elements.
Maybe this behaviour is a setting somewhere…
Plese help me, how to scale not just around the Anchor, but dragging the handles boundaries?
Thanks,
Balazs -
7 Replies
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dragging from a corner handle (w/o the shift key) will scale things freely, but it will always scale outwards from the anchor point…
i don’t know of any setting or modifier key that would change that to be more like, say, photoshop…
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Hi,
thanks for the answer. However there must be something different…
1. I create a simple Solid. The Anchor is in the middle.
2. Drag the lower right corner with the Selection Tool.
3. The Solid scales in all four direction! All I need is to just move the lower right point to scale it.Any idea? It is AE CS4.
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that’s how it works… it scales outward from the anchor point in all directions. if you hold the shift key it will scale outwards but with constrained proportions/aspect. but it always scales outwards from the anchor point, which is at the center of a layer.
as you mentioned, you can move the anchor point to a corner, but when you create a new layer, or bring in a layer, it will have an anchor point at it’s center.
that’s just how ae does it.
you can quickly set the anchor point to the upper-left corner of a layer by selecting the layer and typing ‘a’ (to bring up the anchor point properties) then setting the values to [0,0]. then it will scale outwards from the upper-left, regardless of what corner you drag.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
It is a bit clumsy to work this way, but a good tip!
Thanks. -
it would be nice to have a modifier key to hold to scale from a different point, like photoshop does. but i think scaling form the center only is better than scaling from a corner only…
i’ve been working a lot with a broadcast box that has everything anchored at the bottom-left corner. so, if you want to animate scale, you’ll also be animating the xy position too — and of course x and y are different properties with their own keyframes so a simple push requires animating three properties and a minimum of six keyframes which makes slight changes to the scale keyframes, oh, so much fun….
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
I finally figured out a solution to this. I come from a design background and I’m used to being able to scale objects from the corner. (ie Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign). Unfortunately, it’s not free, but it’s also not too expensive.
I bought a plugin from Mt. Mograph called Motion 2. It has a feature that allows you to snap the anchor point to different corners of your object from its panel menu. What’s good about this is that if you want to pull out the bottom right corner, for example, you select the object and then select the top left anchor point from the Motion 2 panel and then you can scale the object in a way that’s more familiar to a designer.
10811_screenshot20161117at5.28.46pm.png.zip
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Seven years and this ‘not-feature’ is still making me lose amount of time. Is there any free solution? Has it been solved in new versions? (I am using CS6)
Thanks!
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