-
Using repeated shapes as parents
G’day all.
I’m trying to create a historical timeline (history teacher still learning basic AE).
I have all my shapes/dashes sorted (representing decades/centuries/millenia) using the repeater function and through liberal use of the pick-whip and really basic expressions i can expand/contract the spacing depending on the area of focus.What I’m having trouble with is aligning text boxes (dates) to points on the line. As I expand or contract the line I want the text to follow the movement of the repeated shape (ie millenia line etc).
I imagine it’s not a particularly difficult issue, but as I’m new to this stuff I don’t even have the vocab to effectively search for an answer.
I’ve attached an image and any help would be appreciated.
FritzPS. You CreativeCOW people have been gold, providing a huge help for me as I’ve been learning. Keep it up!
-
2 Replies
-
I would make my line, repeating line, text box and parent them all to a null, then use the null scale to zoom in and out. Without knowing your exact set-up, you might have created something where you can’t do it that way now, though.
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb. -
Just to be sure I’m not barking up the wrong tree-
I’ve used a shape layer with three shapes:
“Centuries” (2x200px)
“Millenia” (2x300px)
“Decades” (2x150px)A repeater is set on “centuries”.
Copies: 80
Offset: Copies *-1+1
Position: 30pxA repeater is set on “Decades”.
Repeater Position is locked to that of “centuries”
Copies: “centuries” *10
Offset: Copies*-1+1A repeater is set on “Millenia”.
Repeater Position is locked to that of “centuries”
Copies: “centuries” *.1
Offset: Copies*-1+1Now whenever I move the position or repeater position of “Centuries”, “millenia” and “decades” follows.
I’ve also managed to lock my “2000CE” text to the end position of the timeline so that follows too.
It’s the other dates that I can’t get to move with the repeated shapes
(i’m struggling with the (0,0) position for text being in the top left corner and the (0,0) position for shapes being in the centre of the layer)Thanks for the help so far- I’ll start looking into null objects, but obviously, any help is appreciated.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up