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Anchors and coordinate space

What a layer rotates around, and which space each number is measured in.

Two things confuse people constantly: where a layer’s pivot is, and which coordinate space a given number lives in. They are related, and both are worth ten minutes once.

The anchor is the origin#

Every layer has an anchor point. Rotation turns around it, scale grows from it, and position is measured to it. By default it is the centre of the layer box.

When a layer rotates in a way you did not expect, the anchor is almost always the reason. A door swinging from its middle instead of its hinge is not a rotation problem — it is an anchor problem, and Pivot Offset is the fix.

Try itPivot Offset
This stage redraws the effect for the page; the editor runs it through the full layer pipeline, so expect the shape of the behaviour to match and the exact pixels not to.

Moving the anchor does not move the artwork#

Setting the pivot changes nothing visible until something rotates or scales. That is deliberate: relocating a hinge should not shove the door across the room. If you expected the layer to jump, you wanted Position.

Percent versus pixels#

  • Anchors and pivots are in percent of the layer box. 50/50 is the centre, 0/0 the top-left, and values outside 0–100 land outside the layer entirely.
  • Repeater offsets, wiggle amounts and most effect distances are in pixels, in the layer’s own space.
  • Force driver positions are in percent of the canvas, because a force belongs to the scene rather than to one layer.
Why percent for anchors

Because the layer can be resized. A pivot pinned to the left edge should stay on the left edge when the layer gets wider, and percent is the only way to express that. The consequence is that an anchor set far outside a layer moves a long way when that layer is resized.

Layer space versus canvas space#

Most numbers are in layer space, which is unaffected by the layer’s own rotation. Give a Repeater a Position X of 26 and copies step 26 px along the layer’s own axis — rotate the layer and the whole array rotates with it, keeping its internal spacing.

This is usually what you want, and it is why a rotated fan stays a fan instead of shearing.

Parenting stacks spaces#

A parented layer’s transform is relative to its parent, which is relative to its parent, and so on. A child at position 0,0 sits exactly on its parent, wherever that has ended up. This is why rigs are built from nested transforms rather than from absolute coordinates.