You can't copy Good Parents control from one layer to another: it simply won't work, sorry; If you copy layers with Good Parents controls from one composition to another, you will need to reset the Parent layers. Oh and non-uniform scale may work incorrectly. I know, the humanity! Well, unfortunately it is an After Effects bug. Join the Community at: a Tutorial at: to see more Adobe related content. Export an After Effects project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project; Converting movies; Automated rendering and network rendering; Rendering and exporting still images and still-image sequences; Using the GoPro CineForm codec in After Effects; Working with other applications. Dynamic Link and After Effects; Working with After Effects and other. The best plugins and scripts for 3D, VFX and motion graphics software including Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D and Premiere Pro. Lots of video tutorials showing how to use the tools provided.
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After Effects Parent Missing
Parenting in Adobe After Effects
In today’s tutorial we will take a closer look at another very important basic technique available in Adobe After Effects: parenting. Parenting is used to link one or more layers to a single parent layer. Moving, scaling or rotating the parent layer will then automatically affect all of its children.
Parenting allows you to easily control a number of layer by linking them to a common parent. This is very useful for motion tracking and for managing more complex visual effects.
Let’s start by creating a simple rotating star! Start with an empty composition and then, with the star mask tool, simply drag in the centre of the preview window to create a new shape layer containing a star shape. I’ve set mine to use a red fill colour with a white outline and called the layer ‘Large Star’.
Open up the layer settings and alt-click on the stopwatch icon for the Rotation property. This will open up the After Effects Expression editor. In the editor, enter
time * 30
This will cause the star to continuously rotate around its anchor point.
Now create a second star, smaller than the central one and off to the side. Give it any colour you like and call it ‘Small Star’.
Let’s parent these two layers together. In the layer properties window you will find a column called ‘Parent’. Press F4 on your keyboard if you cannot see this column; it might just be hidden.
To parent the small star to the large star, drag the pick whip icon from the small star layer onto the name for the Large Star layer.
Alternatively you can select the Large Star layer from the parent dropdown menu on the Small Star layer.
If you scrub through your composition now, you will see that the little star is ‘pulled along’ as the large star rotates. This is happening because the Small Star layer is a child of the Large Star layer so the rotation to the parent is also applied to the child.
Now that we’ve got a hang of the basics, let’s move on to a few more complex examples!
How to parent objects in After Effects
Using parenting in After Effects allows you to group individual layers together as one unit and move them together. This means that if you apply transformations such as position or rotation, they will also be applied to any layer you specify as a child to a parented layer. This can be used to setup interesting layer combinations. One thing to note though is that opacity and effects cannot be parented – if you want these to follow the child layers, you'll have to do them manually.
We begin with our layers in the layer and timeline panel.
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First we'll make sure the Parenting option is available in the timeline panel by clicking the Toggle switches/Modes button at the bottom or right-clicking the top of the timeline panel and checking the Parent option from this menu.
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This will open up a Parenting column in our timeline panel. This can be dragged to adjust the size of the column  as well by clicking the sides of the timeline and dragging left or right. To demonstrate basic parenting in After Effects, we'll adjust the Position, Scale and Rotation properties for one of our ball layers. Say we want to parent the Sports_icon layer so that it acts as a child to the Rattan (wooden ball) layer. This means that any transformations we make to the Wooden ball will also be applied to the Sports_icon layer. To do this we'll select the Parent dropdown menu from beside the Sports_icon layer and select the Rattan layer, thus effectively setting the Sports_icon layer as the child.
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Next we'll adjust some properties in the timeline panel for the Rattan wooden ball and as we do, the effects will also transform the Sports_icon layer since it's parented to the wooden ball.
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But notice if we adjust the properties for the Sports_icon child layer, the master Parent layer itself does not get effected. This can be a creative way to use parenting in your own compositions as you can have multiple layers acting as children to one layer and then adjust each individually. And yes, parented layers can be keyframed as well providing you with even more options.  To break a parenting bond, simply just select None from the Parent dropdown menu. Conversely, another way to parent layers together is to use the pickwhip option beside the Parenting column.
After Effects Parent Layer
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Then you simply just drag the whip to the layer you want to be parented in your timeline panel. Â And what if say you want to have two layers parented but wish to adjust their properties individually? Simply just create a Null layer (Layer-New-Null Object) and parent your layers to the null layer. Null layers don't render with your final output and are invisible in the layer, so any changes you make to your real layers will remain. This can take some getting used to though so we suggest practicing setting up actual parented layers first and begin experimenting with null layers when you're more comfortable.