From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 02 Basic Animation

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts.

Aligning and distributing

Aligning and distributing

- [Narrator] The align panel is very useful when you need to align layers or distribute layers across the comp. You open it up by selecting the align panel from the window menu and it will open on the right hand side of the timeline. Now I don't like to give up valuable timeline space, so I'm going to drop it so it shares the same frame as the effects and presets panel. The align panel is divided into two sections, options for aligning layers and options for distributing them. To see this in action, I'll shift click my two video layers. Notice they don't quite align at the top, but they are actually the same height. As soon as I select the layers, I can choose to align them to the selection, meaning themselves, or to the composition. Let's try selection first. As you roll over each option, helpful tool tips pop up. In this case, the three icons on the right will align layers vertically. Since both layers are the same height, I can choose any one of these icons and I'll get the same…

Contents