Parenting

Parenting creates hierarchical relationships between layers, allowing child layers to inherit transform properties from parent layers. Essential for coordinated motion and complex character animation.

What is parenting?

Parenting links a child layer to a parent layer so the child inherits the parent's transform properties.

Transform inheritance:

• •Child moves when parent moves
• •Child rotates around parent's anchor point
• •Child scales with parent's scale
• •Child's transforms are relative to parent

Setting up parenting

Using parent dropdown:

1. Select child layer

2. Find parent icon/dropdown in layer row

3. Click to open parent selection dropdown

4. Choose parent layer from list

5. Child is now parented to selected layer

Layers that cannot be parents:

• •Track matte layers (hidden matte layers)
• •Layers that would create circular dependency

Transform inheritance

Position: Child position is relative to parent position. Final position = Parent position + Child position.

Scale and Skew: Child scale and skew are multiplicative with parents'.

Anchor point: Child rotates around parent's anchor point. Critical for proper hierarchical motion.

Unparenting layers

Removing parent:

1. Select child layer

2. Open parent dropdown

3. Select "(No parent)" option

4. Layer becomes independent

Effect:

• •Child no longer inherits parent transforms
• •Child maintains current world position
• •Local transforms become absolute

Multi-level hierarchies

Create complex hierarchies with nested parenting.

Example hierarchy:

Body (root)
└── Arm
    └── Forearm
        └── Hand
            └── Fingers

Transform flow:

• •Rotate Body → Entire arm rotates
• •Rotate Arm → Forearm, hand, fingers rotate
• •Rotate Forearm → Hand and fingers rotate
• •Rotate Hand → Only fingers rotate