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visual_website0D4D
Participating Frequently
November 8, 2020
Question

After Effects align 2 objetcs, one staying static

  • November 8, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 2968 views

Hello everybody, this is my first question 🙂

 

So I have 2 objects: A and B. I wanna align B to the center of A, but without moving A. Pretty simple but how can I do that ? Because all I can get is B moving and A moving too, halfway to get them aligned..


I hope this is clear, I was very surprised but I didn't find the solution yet..

Thanx in advance to everybody who can reply.
Matei

2 replies

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 9, 2020

Make sure that the Parent/Link column is visible in the timeline by pressing Shift + F4. Select layer B, hold down the Shift key, and select Layer A as the parent. Layer A will snap to the same position, orientation, and scale as layer A. Both anchor points will be in the same position. As long as parenting is in place layer B will follow layer A, but you will still be able to animate the position, scale, and rotation properties of layer B independently. You can also cancel the parenting and layer B will remain in the same position. 

 

The Align panel is useless for what you want to do, use parenting, or as Mylenium said, copy and paste the position property.

    V
    visual_website0D4DAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 9, 2020

    Hello Rick,

     

    Thanx for this solution. First I must say I'm using Adobe After Effects CS6.

    Then, the problem is that this doesn't only change the alignment but also the size of Layer B, which has a new vertical size, although even weirder, nothing changes in the visible properties (the ones under "Transform" label"). Don't know if that changes something but layer A is a rectangle (shape layer) and layer B is a text layer and both have their anchor points in their middle.

     

    Any idea of why this happens that way?

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 10, 2020

    Hi Rick, thanx for your answer, although I'm a bit confused: if I do what you say, as soon as I set the parent, B moves. Which means anchor points of A and B get the same, which is fine. But also, size of B changes, which isn't what I want. Releasing the parent, doens't make any change. Did I miss something? Did you mean that I should first write down B size before parenting, then after parenting and moving B, manually restoring B size to what has been written down before the parenting operation?


    After you release the parent you have to reset the scale of B to the original setting. It's not automatic. If your scale is set to 100% before you Shift + parent, just right-click and reset the scale. If the scale is something else like 50, 75 then you can add this expression to the Scale property before you Shift + Parent, and everything will snap back to the original scale when you release the parenting. 

    [50, 75]

    I hope that clears things up for you. 

      Mylenium
      Mylenium
      Legend
      November 9, 2020

      It's not realyl clear what kind of alignment you are looking for. Could be as easy as simply dialing in the position values/ copy & pasting them or could be more complicated and require some expressions or whatever. Eitehr way. You need to explain better. A screenshot might hugely help to clarify matters...

       

      Mylenium

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