Repositioning Permanent Pivots

Transformations made on a drawing layer, such as rotation, scale, skew and flip, are made relative to the position of the drawing's pivot point. Setting the pivot point at the center of the articulation will allow the drawing layer's pieces to transform as expected.

There are two ways to reposition your pivot. You can reposition a pivot in a temporary or permanent manner.

To reposition the pivot temporarily, activate the transform tool, click and drag your pivot. This has no permanent effect. It will only temporarily change the pivot's position allowing you to make transformations at the selected frame, but the actual pivot point of your drawing layer will remain the same.

NOTE When you translate the pivot point, a gray circle will remain at the place of origin, indicating the temporary state of the adjustment.

To reposition your pivot permanently, you will need to adjust your pivot using one of the tools in the Advanced Animation toolbar. Once you have permanently adjusted the pivot, your pivot will appear in the new chosen position.

NOTE When you permanently move the pivot point of a layer that is already animated, all the transformations done on the layer on other keyframes will be recalculated according to the new pivot point's position. Therefore, your existing animation will look completely different, except at the current frame. It is recommended to always make sure your pivot point is at its ideal position before you start animating.
  1. In the Advanced Animation toolbar, select the Translate , Rotate , Scale , or Skew tool.
  1. Do one of the following:
    • In the Timeline view, select the layer for which you want to move the pivot.
    • In the Camera view, Ctrl + click (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + click (macOS) on the layer for which you want to move the pivot.

The pivot point appears in the Camera view.

  1. Move the cursor over the pivot point. When the mouse cursor becomes , click and drag on the pivot point to reposition it.

The layer's pivot point is now repositioned. If the layer has been animated, its position will be offset across the scenes relative to how much you just offset the pivot point.