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imrankhan1
Participant
April 26, 2026
Open for Voting

Native Alignment Tools and CSS-style Syntax for Shape Contents

  • April 26, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 30 views

The Problem:

Currently, the Align Panel only works for Top-Level Layers. If I have a single Shape Layer containing multiple shapes (e.g., a "Small Square" and a "Large Square"), I cannot use the Align tools to center the small square perfectly inside the large one.

To do this now, I have to manually math out the "Offset" values or use "Group" transforms, which is slow and imprecise. This is a major bottleneck when building complex UI mockups or geometric visualizations within a single layer.

 

The Requested Feature:

  1. Align Panel Support for Shapes: When double-clicking into a Shape Layer, the Align Panel should allow me to align selected "Rectangles" or "Paths" relative to each other or the Layer's bounding box.

  2. CSS-style Expression Methods: Provide a simple way to align shapes via code. Similar to how we use Flexbox or Grid in CSS, we should be able to write expressions like:

    • content("Rect 1").align("center", "middle", "Rect 2");

    • content("Rect 1").position = align("left", "top");

  3. Anchor Point Autocentering: A toggle for shapes to automatically keep their anchor point in their geometric center when their size or path changes.

Why this matters:

For users creating "Technical Edutainment" or data-driven animations, we often keep multiple elements in one layer to keep the timeline clean. Having to create a new layer for every single box just to use the Align tool makes projects messy and uses more RAM Adding a "CSS" logic to expressions would make After Effects feel modern and much more intuitive for developers.

    1 reply

    Community Expert
    April 28, 2026

    I have a set of animation presets that use Groups and step through the elements in the group instead of using property names to both tie elements to motion paths and adjust their relative positions. A single click on a preset does what you are asking.

    When I get them all packaged and the tutorial videos made I’ll post links. The presets make data driven animations easy to customize and execute, and they are also easily transferable to MOGRTs to use in Premiere Pro.