Rotating the anchor point independently

[Darby Edelen]

I’m a little confused about the terminology you’re using. The anchor point is, by definition, a point… so it can’t really be rotated in space because it is one dimensional. The anchor point is, among other things, what the layer rotates around.

If you want to move the anchor point in order to change where the rotation of the layer is centered then you can use the Pan Behind Tool (y) to accomplish this.

If I’m misunderstanding something, please try to clarify what it is you need your layers to do exactly.

Darby Edelen

NVIDIA
Santa Clara, CA

[Jeremy Evans]

Thanks for responding, Darby.

I think it’s actually the orientation of the “gizmo” I’m talking about (the x,y,z arrows). For example, say you have an imported layer from photoshop that has an alpha channel and there is a rectangle on that layer when the background is dropped out. The rectangle is at a 45 degree angle and you use pan behind tool to move the anchor point so that it is centered at the bottom center of that rectangle. You’re now set to rotate it, except, since the original layer is really not on a 45 degree angle, it makes it hard to rotate the rectangle without re-orienting the x,y and z axis to match the rectangle’s bottom edge (45 degrees). If I could do that, I would be able to rotate on only the x or only the y. Not have to rotate all three in order to get a smooth rotation.

Does this make sense?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Mike Clasby]

Maybe I too don’t understand, but can you pre-comp the original rectangles, then in that precomp rotate them so they are not at a 45 degree angle, but will be a “right” angles to the camera, and then in the main comp they will be easy to rotate?

So do the angle corrections in the precomp.

[Jeremy Evans]

Mike,
I guess you could do that, but then you’d have to reset their positions in the main comp. This was for a print advertising agency so their ads must be exactly how they gave them to us. Seems like an aweful lot of messing around for something that should be very simple. I know it’s a little hard to visualize, and when I show people even with my fingers as representations, people understand. Then they are stumped. I’ve been asking around, and apparently there is no easy way to do this. The last suggestion that I received was to use a null. Oh well. It would have made the project go a lot faster and my rations a lot more accurate. Thanks for trying.

Jeremy

[Jon Draper]

Hi.
I’m trying to acheive the exact same thing.

(It is hard to explain if you’ve never used a 3d package but its a very handy normal tool)

I want to be able to rotate the ‘gizmo’ so the angle of the anchor point e.g. the Y axis runs along a diagonal. (No rotate the image to match the axis.)

Did you ever find out if it was possible. I’ve spent the last 5 years working in After Effects as my day job, making promo videos and this is the first time I’ve needed to do it. I guess normally a 90 degree angle if fine…

For your information I’m creating a paper aeroplane animation.

A document folds up into a plane and flies off.

Could achieve it easily in 3ds max, but I’m using After Fx on a Mac…

I have achieved it as is, and it looks alright. I had to adjust the x,y and z axis for each separate folded part of the page to get it to rotate at the right angle after having moved the anchor point to the edge where it folds.

Its ok, but you can see that some of the folds are not 100% right, e.g. when the plane folds up and flies past, you can see one of the folds sticks out awkwardly a little and it takes lots of adjusting the x,y,z rotation to find where it should be.

[Perry Angelora]

This is a bit late but I was having the same problem. My solution was to create a Null Object, rotate it as needed then parent it to the object you wanted to rotate the gizmo on.

[Alfred Timotei]

I am sure it is late (after 4 years or so :D) but maybe there are others who need this answer.

You can set the orientation on 45 degree and then use the rotation parameter to set it as you need. If you adjust the orientation parameter first, you can achieve what you want.

[Matt Shaw]

I searched Google and (as usual) got to this forum – and Alfred Timotei, it’s never too late! You’re my hero, thanks! Simple solution as ever, but it works perfectly