Adobe After Effects offers a powerful feature called Parent and Link, which allows you to create relationships between layers. This makes it easier to animate multiple layers together or maintain alignment and movement consistency. Whether you’re animating a character or syncing multiple objects, parenting saves a lot of time and effort.
🧩 What is Parenting in After Effects?
Parenting means assigning one layer (child) to follow another layer’s (parent) transformations — such as position, rotation, and scale.
For example:
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When you parent a hand to an arm, moving the arm moves the hand too.
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But if you move the hand, the arm won’t follow — only child follows the parent, not the other way around.
🔗 What is the “Pick Whip”?
The Pick Whip is a spiral icon next to each layer’s Parent & Link column. You can click and drag it to another layer to establish the parent-child relationship easily.
🧭 How to Use Parent and Link in After Effects (Step-by-Step)
✅ Step 1: Open Your Project
Open your composition in Adobe After Effects.
✅ Step 2: Prepare Your Layers
Make sure you have multiple layers ready — for example, character parts, motion graphics, etc.
✅ Step 3: Enable the Parent & Link Column
If you don’t see the Parent & Link column:
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Right-click on the layer bar → Click on Columns → Enable Parent & Link
✅ Step 4: Parent a Layer
Use one of the following methods:
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Drag the Pick Whip from the child layer to the desired parent layer.
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OR select the parent layer name from the dropdown menu under the Parent & Link column.
✅ Step 5: Animate the Parent Layer
Now when you move, scale, or rotate the parent layer — the child will follow those transformations.
🛠 Example Use Cases
| 🎯 Use Case | 🎨 How It Helps |
|---|---|
| Character Rigging | Parent hands to arms, arms to torso |
| Text with Background Shape | Parent background box to follow text |
| Camera and Null | Parent camera to a Null Object for control |
| Complex Motion Graphics | Parent elements to a central rotating object |
💡 Pro Tips
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You can unlink layers by setting the parent back to None.
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Combine with Null Objects for more flexible control over multiple layers.
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Parenting works great with Pre-compositions too.
🧪 Conclusion
Parent and Link is a core part of motion design in After Effects. It allows clean, controlled, and powerful animation setups. Once you understand parenting, your animation workflow becomes much smoother and more professional.
