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hellopaul4
hellopaul4
Inspiring
March 6, 2025
Question

Equal (from each edge of comp) guides to centre things in the comp viewer?

  • March 6, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 341 views

I occasionally find myself trying to align things an equal distance from the edge of a comp. I can drag a guide and specify its position, and then subtract that amount from the width of the comp and drag another one to that position, but that's a bit of a faff, especially if I want to then adjust both guides "in a bit more" for example. Many years ago, I remember using an external box (probably a hardware scope) that had a knob-adjustable guideline thing, which would display a couple of guides that were equidistant from the edge of frame. The knob would adjust the distance of both of them from the edge of frame. It was very useful.

 

To replicate this, it'd be nice if AE provided a way of adding these "equal" guides. Maybe alt-dragging a guide onto the comp would add a pair of guides, each the same distance from the edge. They could be a different colour from regular guides, and if I adjusted the position of one, the other one of the corresponding pair would also move.

 

This would be ideal for laying out text in situations like this:

 

2 replies

sskaz
sskaz
Inspiring
March 6, 2025

You can make a rectangle shape layer, delete the fill, add a stroke, make it taller than your comp, adjust the size width, and maybe set it as a guide layer. Then make it preset to reuse it. (Presets can’t save guide layer type though.)

 

I attached a preset, and its sample project, with some extra expressions to make it friendlier: https://we.tl/t-NA5WHMkGHD (Unfortunately this link expires in 7 days)

 

 

    Shebbe
    Community Expert
    ShebbeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2025

    An interesting idea for guides to make them mirror.

     

    I occasionally find myself trying to align things an equal distance from the edge of a comp.

    Isn't what you're saying essentially the same as centering an object? This could be achieved with the align panel as well and even could be set up to be dynamically adjusted if using expressions instead.

    hellopaul4
    hellopaul4Author
    Inspiring
    March 6, 2025

    Mathematically centring a thing isn't always the best option - optically and practically. In my example text block, the text is left-aligned, because I want it to "type on" from the left edge, and not "grow" from the centre; I want this:

    R

    RE

    REA

    READY

    and not this:

         R

        RE

      REA

    READY

    ...so centring the text block with an expression according to its width would not work. Also, if I had two separate layers, and I want to place each one the same width from the edge, there isn't an "align" tool to do that; doing it by eye is the best way.

    Shebbe
    Community Expert
    ShebbeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2025

    Yea mathematical alignement may not always be exactly what you want, but expressions can also look at frames past your animation so you could do the calculation based on the object's bounding box after the type on has happened. We use this very often because we need to make templateable text animations that still need to align well regardless of the amount of text.

    The other case you mention is likely also achieveable via expressions. But I understand that this isn't always practical if the intent is only a single fixed design that doesn't need to automatically adapt to anything.

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