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can you create a new parent child relationship in After Effects composition timeline?

Community Beginner ,
Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

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So I am trying to animate a seagull eating a worm which has hair. Don't ask! Currently the worm's hair layer is parented to the worm's body so as the worm comes up through the earth, the worm's hair comes up in position on top of worm's head. But then the worm stops and sees the seagull above ground. The seagull bends down, opens its beak and then at this point I want to get the seagull's beak to appear as if it is lifting the hair off the worm's head, so I wondered if at this point which is about 9 seconds on my timeline, I could change the parent child relationship so that the seagull's upper and lower beak are the parents so that as the seagull's beak moves up, the hair is taken off the worm's head. 

Then I want the seagull to drop the hair on the ground so I'm presuming I will have to somehow create a new maskpath for the hair as a key frame along the timeline.

Can anyone help me how to do this?

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Expressions , How to , Scripting

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Guide , Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

Go to the point where you want the change in parenting to occur. Go to Edit > Split layer, then turn the parenting on or off in the appropriate section.

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Mentor ,
Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

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You can just cut the hair layer when the seagull it about doing its thing - and parent the cutted layer to the seagulls beak.

 

It's a bit annoying when you want to adjust the worm later on, but still faster than writing a complex expression which will handle this automatically.

 

*Martin

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 25, 2021 Mar 25, 2021

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Thanks Martin, I've split the layer and then given new layer a new parent. Works like magic!

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Guide ,
Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

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Go to the point where you want the change in parenting to occur. Go to Edit > Split layer, then turn the parenting on or off in the appropriate section.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 25, 2021 Mar 25, 2021

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Thanks Angie, this worked really well!

 

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LEGEND ,
Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

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What Martin said - keep it simple. Simply split the layers and animate them separately. Of course it would be possible to create dynamic parenting with expressions, but that would require extra rigging, extra keyframes and so on. simply not worth the effort most of the time unless you need to e.g. create complex mechanical motions. Conventional keyframing and cutting your work in individual time segments is way to go.

 

Mylenium

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 25, 2021 Mar 25, 2021

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Yes the edit split layer works very well! What a discovery! Thanks Mylenium.

 

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Community Expert ,
Mar 24, 2021 Mar 24, 2021

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A layer can only have one parent. Usually the easiest way is to split the layer at the point where you want to change the parent. If you don't want that for whatever reason, my Limited Time Parent iExpression is also an option.

Mathias Möhl - Developer of tools like BeatEdit and Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro and After Effects

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People's Champ ,
Mar 25, 2021 Mar 25, 2021

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No just have two hair layers as Martin said and trim them accordingly so the hair layer parented to the worm ends and on the very next frame the hair layer parented to the bird begins.  Magic. 🙂 

~Gutterfish

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