How do I animate an image based on relative position in after effects?

Question

When I add text to an after effects project there's an "animate" triangle I can click which lets me animate the position of the text from 0.0, 0.0. This is great because if I duplicate that layer and move it around the text animates relatively from its new position no problem.

I'd like to do this with an image but I can't work out how to do it. Animating the position of the image based on key frames is fine but when I try to duplicate and move the animated image around it animates from it's original position.

Is there any easy way to do this?

Answer 1

You can move the anchor point of a layer, but this may upset scale, rotation or masking. There is a much simpler and very intuitive way to do it.

Click on the position property to select all keyframes. Park the playhead on one of these keyframes (use j or k keys to do this). Now if you move one of the keyframes they all move. If you don't park the playhead on an existing keyframe then you will just create a new keyframe at the current time and leave the others unchanged.

Tip: If you need to have the playhead at a particular time to see the relative position and there is no keyframe there, just create a temporary one at the current time.

Answer 2

And furthermore there is parenting. You parent your image to a null. Copy the null and image over, and set the null in a new position. The image will move relative to the null's position

Answer 3

There are several ways. You can use an adjustment layer to apply to the layers above it or you can nest a composition such that the movements of that composition apply to everything in the source. I most often use the nested composition approach as it lets me work on things separately, but it is a bit more of a pain for making changes while looking at the final output, so it isn't ideal for every situation.

Answer 4

I've found that using the Anchor Point is a great way to do this. The position will not copy over (be sure to just copy the anchor point animation), and it will instead animate relative to the position.

I usually do it the reverse of this. I set my position using the Anchor Point, and then animate using keyframes on the Position.

I generally don't use the "Animate" button on text in AE, though, so this might not work as you're expecting.