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A
Anonymous
December 26, 2018
Question

Parenting problem ?? what's going on ? weird results

  • December 26, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 13637 views

Hi everyone, Did something change in the last updates of After effects? I being using AE for decades... yes decades, since version 3.1 but today I just can't do a simple parenting...

maybe there is a hidden preference somewhere.... this never happened to me.

So layer B is parented to A.

Layer A is in a different position and it has some scale applied, no animation so far. Normal result would be as soon as you parent layer B to layer A any new modification over layer A will be apply also to layer B. Well when I parented the Layer B to layer A it automatically copy the distorsion and position of the layer A instead of remain untouch and move or deform with any new adjustmente over layer A.

??????? what's going on here? Can't believe I'm stucked on something like this

Thanks for your help

5 replies

T
tristansummers
Inspiring
March 18, 2023

IT'S EXPRESSIONS.

And I think it started when they moved to JavaScript. 

I find if there are no expressions, the child remains in the same position but if there are expressions it moves. Parent first, expressions second.

And this is because the values update on the child based on the parent, which changes the expression.

This might also have always worked this way but we are all using more expressions now processors are fast enough and the expression engine has joined the 21st century. 

 

    A
    APV
    Participant
    January 20, 2023

    Hi. I know this is an old post but probably others like me will come across it because of this behaviour.

    I don't know if it is the single cause for this but it happends when I have an expression on position, scale or rotation. That is why you need nulls matching those parameters and then parenting that null to a 'master' null.

    Hope this helps future users.

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2022

    Shift + parent snaps the child layer to the same position as the parent and applies all of the same Layer/Transform properties except opacity.

     

    The sample comp is gone, but I cannot reproduce the error.

    T
    tristansummers
    Inspiring
    September 5, 2022

    Sometimes though,  you pick whip to parent a layer and the layer moves. I would like to know what would cause this. Parenting to an object that has scaled to 0 goes wrong, but if the parent is scaled to 1% before parenting, it works. So maybe the clue is in the number values.  It would be helpful to have a list of circumstances where pickwhipping to a parent (not holding anything else) will still move the child and make the twenty-five year After Effects Vet scream like a Banshee

    O
    Orr22596348r8eq
    Participant
    January 11, 2022

    Hi, 
    I have been using After Effects for a few years and now, for the first time, I have encountered it too.

    Layer A is the parent, Layer B is the child
    Untill now, parenting the general whip parenting didn't change absulut values, but it began to behave as if I liked the "Scale of B to the skale of A" with Alt key...
    very wierd, never had to use nulls to parent them, since the general pickwhip was like "from this point forward" kind of parenting and now it changes....

      B
      bálinth52542354
      Participating Frequently
      January 20, 2022

      Same thing here! Today it started to do this. But the weird thing is that this only happens every once in a while, and not consistently. I don't know what's going on. Never met this issue before, been using AE for a long time. 

      A
      Anonymous
      December 26, 2018

      here is an example project.. it seems that rotation is the problem. what why? 

      Dropbox - parent problem.aep

      Maybe a bug? or some weird new preference....?

      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 27, 2018

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/Mariano+Puppo  wrote

      here is an example project.. it seems that rotation is the problem. what why? 

      Dropbox - parent problem.aep

      Maybe a bug? or some weird new preference....?

      Not weird. Predictable and expected. There is no change in behavior here. It's a render order thing. The properties of the child are recalculated based on its position, scale, and rotation of the parent. For example, if the child is 200 pixels left of the parent and 100 pixels above the parent the new position for the child is [x parent - 200, y parent - 100]. If the parent is at 10º then the child will be at -10º. If the scale of the parent is [50, 100] then the child's scale will be [200, 100]. When you add rotation to uneven scale the values will be combined with rotation giving you the parallelogram you are seeing in your sample project. Parenting has always worked that way, and if you really think about it it makes sense. The only option I can see would be to somehow change the render order so that rotation was calculated before scale.

      The workaround is to add a null to the project, hold down the shift key and parent select the A layer to move the null to the same position scale and rotation as the A layer, release the parenting, reset the null's scale, then parent both the A and B layer to the null.

      Mo Moolla
      Mo Moolla
      Legend
      December 27, 2018

      "The workaround is to add a null to the project, hold down the shift key and parent select the A layer to move the null to the same position scale and rotation as the A layer, release the parenting, reset the null's scale, then parent both the A and B layer to the null."

      100% on the money

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