Perfect circle with centered anchor point

[Michael Patten]

Perfect! Thank you.

[Jeremy Allen]

OR…

– turn on Action/Title safe guides
– select the ellipse tool
– position your cursor over the center cross hairs and start dragging
– without releasing the mouse, press command to expand from the center and shift to constrain to a perfect circle

This works for square and non-square pixel comps.

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

C4D 11.5
AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Darby Edelen]

[Jeremy Allen] “This works for square and non-square pixel comps.”

Both methods can work for square or non-square pixel comps as long as the solid that Dave’s mask method is applied to uses square pixels.

In the method you provided I would be concerned about the potential of user error in position of the anchor point relative to the center of the circle. If it’s not perfect and there’s rotation involved even a sub-pixel error can cause trouble.

An alternative to make sure that the shape layer is perfectly centered on the anchor point is to hold shift while dragging out the Ellipse Tool anywhere in the composition. Then twirl open the layer’s Contents > Ellipse 1 > Transform: Ellipse 1 properties and change the Position property to [0,0].

If you need to resize your circle to a specific diameter, that setting is under Contents > Ellipse Path 1 > Size.

Darby Edelen

[Michael Banks]

Thanks, Darby. Your method of creating a perfectly centered circle was what I was looking for.

One hang-up I experienced was that I was trying to apply your method to a solid layer, and the “Contents > Ellipse 1 > Transform: Ellipse 1” property didn’t exist. I had to apply the Ellipse tool to an empty comp to get your result.

Thanks again!

-Michael

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[Ben Mullins]

Thank you! Simple tip but very rewarding!

[Jeff Salman]

Was trying to figure this out with a shape layer. Darby, your explanation helped me too. Just wanted to say thanks!