Repeat Rectangle Around a Circle

[Erik Waluska]

I don’t quite understand what you are doing so it’s hard to say what you’re doing wrong. Could you post some more details?

[Clive Smith]

I should have put up an image in the first place, sorry! I created this in PS.

To do this in AE, I created a shape layer and put a rectangle in it. I set the anchor point below the rectangle and then added a repeater.

I cannot figure out how to create this with just a repeater. All the rotate options don’t repeat the shape around the anchor point.

What am I doing wrong here?

[Erik Waluska]

Ah, I see what you mean now. Honestly, I haven’t fooled with shape layers enough to know all of the ins and outs but you’re right, it appears that the rotation is independent of the anchor point. Another way you could do this is to just duplicate the layer and add this expression to the rotation property of the duplicate layers (not to the original layer though):

thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.rotation+20

Change the 20 to whatever rotation value you want and each layer will rotate that amount past the previous layer’s rotation.

[Clive Smith]

Thanks for the help Eric. I will try your expression.

What I wanted to do, was start the shapes’ opacity at 0%, then keyframe to 100 and then cycle the whole lot. This was, I would have a rotating clock of sorts.

I know that there is a tutorial here somewhere, but I am darned if I can find it.

[Erik Waluska]

You might be thinking of this one:
https://www.sternfx.com/tutorials/53#video

[Clive Smith]

This is it! Thanks so much Eric for all your help.

I cold have sworn it was a repeater function and having said that, I am sure that it could be done with a repeater… just need to figure out how to rotate around its’ own anchor point!

Thank you again!

[Erik Waluska]

You’re welcome, glad I could help. If you figure out the repeater thing be sure to post back.

[Andrew Bailey]

Just in case anyone else stumbles on this post and can’t figure out what’s going on, the Repeater function defaults to rotate around the center of the comp. It is not automatically linked to the anchor point of your shape. The quickest way to fix this is to copy the Anchor Point co-ordinates from the Transform controls for the Shape into the Transform controls for the Repeater.