RenderTom’s New Hooker for After Effects is Possibly the Most Robust Way to Connect Points to Layers

The hype of After Effects’ new feature that allows users use expression access to Bezier path points on masks, shape layers, and paint brush strokes, continues. A new tool from Tomas Sinkunas looks like a rapid way to connect points and layers to each other. Hooker offers a well thought out panel and workflow in After Effects, and it can instantly create connected layers to any path or maks point.

All you have to do is select a path point in the Hooker panel and hit a button. Hooker will instantly give you a layer that will control that point. What is interesting is that the link even works with rotate, scale, skewed or any other transform attribute.

If you are looking for a better option than the “Create Nulls from PAths” panel in After Effects, then you should give Hooker a try.

Hooker features:

• Hook/unhook one or more path points at the time.
• Target inTangents, outTangents or Vertices individually.
• Create separate hooks for path points or hook them up to the selected layer.
• Hooked path points stay in place even if layer or shape transformations are applied.
• Works with Shape Layers as well as any other layers that have Masks.
• Works with multiple paths at the same time.
• Panel shows which path points are hooked and which are not.
• The context menu provides an additional way to hook/unhook path points.
• Targets tab shows what layers currently selected path points are hooked to.
• Coordinates tab lets you position path points in both composition or shape layer scope.