Alight Motion is well-known to have many tools which can enhance the videos created by it. Layer Parenting and Null objects are two of those crucial tactics which you can use for the same.
Layer Parenting means that you make a certain layer parent which makes the other child layers follow it in terms of position, scale and rotation.
Null objects are new layers which you can make invisible to be used with layer parenting. These help you get more control over the animations of each layer.
Layer Parenting
How to Parent Layers
First you need to have at least two or more layers on your project. Next, select the layer you need, make the child layer and tap on the button “Layer Parent”. You will see a drop down menu. Select the parent layer from it. Now you should be able to see an arrow indicating the parent layer of the selected child layer.
Say, as you go on, you need to unparent a layer. In this case, select the parent layer that you want to unparent, and select the “None” button from the menu you get there.
How to Use Parenting
You can use layer parenting in many effective ways;
- You should understand by now that the child layers follow the parent layer. So you can change the parent layer positions to have the child layers change their positions too.
- Also, if you rotate the parent layer, the child layers get rotated in the same direction and angle.
- Similarly, if you change the scale of a parent layer, you will find the child layers change their scales in the same magnitude as well.
The overlapping of layers that could take place when you perform changes in the parent layer, will not stop the effects. In fact, you should keep in mind that it is always the child who follows the parent and not the other way around. So making changes to a child layer will not affect the parent layer at all. Furthermore, the order of the layer placement on the timeline will not be a factor that has influence on the child-parent relationship.
Parenting Grades
Though you can have as many child layers as you wish under a single parent, each child layer can have only one parent. However, you can have a parent layer as a child of another parent layer. This will lead to more complex animations on your visual. This way of making each parent layer a child of another brings chain animations.
Effects and Parenting
Though we talk about moving, rotating and scaling, there are plenty of more effects which you can add to a parent layer, thus allowing the child layers to follow. These include oscillate, swing, bend, auto-shake, etc. The list of these effects can be found under the Layer Parenting tag when you open the “Effect Browser”.
You can have objects moving around curved paths and form vector drawings by using a trick on a child layer. If you select the effect called Move Along Path and add it to a child layer, it will start moving around the parent layer.
The Parenting Helper Effect
This tool will help you make each child layer different when following the parent layer. Say you need a certain layer to move slow and another to move fast compared to the parent layer. The Parenting Helper effect is where you get the chance to do it. Not only the motion, you can also control the magnitude of motion under this tool. Furthermore, there are a few modes that you can use to change the parent layer behavior.
- If you select the setting “Normal”, the original behavior of the parent layer will be dominant.
- Then there is the “Locked” option. This will prevent the child layer from changing its size or rotating. Anyway, if the parent layer changes position, it will apply to the child layer.
- If you go for the “Weighted” option, you get the chance to adjust the degree of change of each change that the parent layer undergoes. You can customize this as a percentage of that of the original motion. You get to define the Rotate Weight, Scale Weight, etc. under this option.
For instance, say there is a rotation in the parent layer at an angle of 30 degrees. If you are in “Normal” setting, the child layer will also be rotated by 30 degrees. If you are in the “Locked” setting there will be no rotation. If you enter a weighted rotation of 300%, the child layer will be rotated by 90 degrees.
Another option that you get is “Auto Rotate”. You can apply this if you want to rotate the child layer horizontally or vertically with the parent layer.
Then there is the Radius Adjust that will help you rotate objects such as wheels, etc. You can also enter the radius as you wish and change the transparency degree of the layer as well. The value range covers both positive and negative values here.
Null Objects
How to add Null Objects
Open Alight Motion on your Android mobile or iPhone. Now create a new layer by tapping on “Add layer”. Then, go to the “Object” option and select “Null”. If you have an iPad, find “Null” under the Object tab.
Now, all you see is the wireframe of the Null Object indicating its position, angle and scale. So when you further edit your project, you will have to remember its positioning and use it as a reference. However, the Null object is invisible on your end product video.
How to Use Null Objects
Null Objects, although invisible originally, can also be used as parent layers. Making a Null Object a parent will allow its child layers to follow it and behave like it. This technique can help you a few different ways such as:
If you want more precise control over the layer in terms of axes and positioning, null object parenting can help you. You can animate a layer in 2 axes and leave the Z-axis out, or vice versa. The same is effective in scaling.
Apply motion to 2 layers in different manners.
Final Words
From this article, you can understand the difference between layer parenting and using null objects, how you can use them to control layer motion and what tricks can you use in between them.
It should be clear that Alight Motion consists of many such professional video enhancing tools which you can use to generate perfectly precise outcomes. So if you use the app already, you can use this knowledge to try these tools out and improve your editing skills.