Keep text anchor point centered, regardless of character panel tuning

[JBrown321]

It's become so tedious constantly centering the anchor point. (which there is no easy way to do without a 3rd party tool anyways). I'd love an option or mode to keep it centered regardless of the various tunes that are made to the text layer. 

[JohnColombo]

Hi @JBrown321,

Thanks for making this request. There is an included preset called Lock Anchor Point that allows you to keep the Anchor Point centered as the text is changed, or keep it locked to the top-left, middle-right, etc. Let us know if that preset helps you acheive what you're looking to do.

Cheers,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[sskaz]

There’s a built-in preset called “Lock Anchor Point” that may be what you’re looking for. I find it useful for lots of types of layers, not just text.

Edit: John was faster than me.

[JBrown321]

Thanks, I will give that a try!

[Roland Kahlenberg]

I want to passively state that if you want to set your Text Layer's Anchor Point at a Baseline, on any line and locked horizontally to the Text Layer's rectangular edges or actual text character, there's a script, Anchor Point Pro that does this. It also has a robust Anchor Point feature that supports a closed mask, rotation, parenting, transform.scale and you can change paragraph alignment without moving the text - very useful if you've already set up the layout and need this adjustment. 

Anchor Point Pro was passively launched today as part of a set of 20+ scripts with '00s of features and options. 

[JBrown321]

Thanks everyone. I still feel like this should be default behavior or at the least have it built in to the character panel as an option or options. 

[Roland Kahlenberg]

My thoughts are AE has always leveraged its developer community as part of its community building program. Every successful app requires an eco-system made up of users, developers, and trainers and each have their own eco-system. 

Also, while it is possible the AE Team may eventually make this feature part of the main app, the danger is they may be digging a rabbit hole they don't want to be it. Solving for one feature may require solving for related issues/features and while possibly not an endless series of tasks, there is the issue of Opportunity Costs and whether a third party can solve for the feature reliably and for the long-term. 

I develop MoGraph Design Systems and a critical requirement is to analyze requirements from a Systems Thinking POV - with Text Layers, things get very wide and deep very quickly and for my use-case, a Text Layer's position, other than its Anchor Point/Baseline also forms a critical part of an overall solution. So, it won't be long before user-expectations expand to meet their needs and this is where the rabbit hole gets deeper. So, what may seem like a short term solve actually involves a deeper and longer-running commitment. This is also why you should go on a few dates before deciding to get married. 😉