After Effects Text Layers, as are shape layers offer an incredible (albeit unwieldy) amount of power. You may have noticed however, when animation text layers specifically, the anchor point for the type is at the baseline rather than the center of the bounding box for that element.
There is a new CC2014.2 update for After Effects, and with it is a new expression that can do some cool stuff
This means that adding animation like rotation, will not behave as one might expect. There are a couple of ways to center the anchor point to the bounding box of the text element. As Mike Borup shows, its not such a complicated process, just a hassle.
More-so if you change the size of the Text Layer’s bounding box. Then the centering that you did for that anchor point becomes no longer relevant. Good news though – the latest update to After Effects CC 2014.2 comes with a new expression that has been long awaited.
With After Effects CC2014.2 you are now able to read some additional information about the propertied of a text layer though expressions and scripting. These would include layer coordinates and character properties.
Mikey Borup shows how to use the expression. sourceRectAtTime to dynamically keep the anchor point centered no matter what happens to the text layer it is applied to.
