How do I align a cartoon character without effecting the inner layers?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
September 28, 2017
2 replies
684 views

I tried to align a character in After Effects by selecting the entire character and used the align panel

however when i center the character, the eyes, shadows etc all get centered too!

how can I fix that?

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Correct answer Rick Gerard

You can parent layers you don't want to move to the parts that you want to move then either lock the layers or make sure you don't select them. Now when you align the Parent, the children will stay in position.

You can also pre-compose. Without knowing exactly what you are trying to do and seeing your entire UI with all the layers in question showing it is extremely difficult to figure out what's going on or the best way to do it.

angie_taylor

Legend

Check out Adobe Character Animator, it may be easier for you to learn than AE and it's designed for animating characters

R

Rick Gerard

Correct answer

Community Expert

You can parent layers you don't want to move to the parts that you want to move then either lock the layers or make sure you don't select them. Now when you align the Parent, the children will stay in position.

You can also pre-compose. Without knowing exactly what you are trying to do and seeing your entire UI with all the layers in question showing it is extremely difficult to figure out what's going on or the best way to do it.

M

moo90492967Author

Participant

Thank you so much! I already pre-composed the character and it worked fine!

however now I have no idea how to animate the individual elements within the character as its moving

for example my ghost character is floating around & I want the character to change facial expressions as its floating around (I already made all the facial expressions and they are within the pre-comp) any idea how I can do that?

Mylenium

Legend

That's just how it works. If you want to only align certain objects to another, then only select those. Otherwise perhaps you should wise up by learning the fine art of pre-composing, setting anchor points, manually aligning stuff and also prepping your work beforehand as best as you can e.g. in Illustrator by aligning elements properly to the artboard. Beyond its layers and comps AE simply has no magical understanding of structure. There are also some scripts out there that can help...

Mylenium

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