About Parent And Child Layers; To Work With Parent And Child Layers; To Reset The Anchor Point - Adobe AFTER EFFECTS 7.0 Manual

Select the Pan Behind tool.
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In the Composition panel, use the Pan Behind tool to drag the anchor point to a new location. Notice that the
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Position and Anchor point values change for that layer.

To reset the anchor point

After moving the anchor point with the Pan Behind tool, you can quickly reset the anchor point to the center of the
layer. Dragging the anchor point with the Pan Behind tool repositions the layer's anchor point and changes the layer's
position value but does not visually move the layer. Resetting the anchor point places it back in the middle of the
layer, but when you do so, the layer moves, not the anchor point.
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To reset the anchor point, double-click the Pan Behind tool
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To reset the anchor point and reset the position to the center of the composition, Alt-double-click (Windows) or
Option-double-click (Mac OS) the Pan Behind tool.

About parent and child layers

To assign one layer's transformations to the transformations of another layer, use parenting. Parenting can affect all
transform properties except opacity. Assign parent layers in the Parent column in the Timeline panel. A layer can
have only one parent, but a layer can be a parent to any number of 2D or 3D layers within the same composition. You
cannot animate the act of assigning and removing the parent designation—that is, you cannot designate a layer as a
parent at one point in time and then designate it as a normal layer at a different point in time. Parenting layers is
useful for creating complex animations such as linking the movements of a marionette or depicting the orbits of
planets in the solar system.
Dragging the pick whip to designate the saucer layer as the parent to the planet layer
Once a layer is made a parent to another layer, the other layer is called the child layer. Creating a parenting
relationship between layers synchronizes the changes in the parent layer with the corresponding transformation
values of the child layers. For example, if a parent layer moves 5 pixels to the right of its starting position, then the
child layer will also move 5 pixels to the right of its position. You can animate child layers independent of their parent
layers. You can also parent using null objects, which are hidden layers.
Note: To show or hide the Parent column, choose Columns > Parent from the Timeline panel menu.

To work with parent and child layers

When you assign a parent, the child layer's properties become relative to the parent layer instead of to the compo-
sition. By default, After Effects adjusts any keyframe values of the child layer so that its properties appear to remain
relative to the composition and, thereby, there is no visible alteration to the layer itself. However, you can choose to
have the child layer jump, or visibly alter its properties relative to the parent layer. For example, consider two layers
in a composition, where one of the layer's Position property has been changed and the other has not. If you assign
the unchanged layer as the child of the changed layer and do not choose the jump option, then the child layer will
not move. If you do choose the jump option, then the child layer's position shifts so that its position is now relative
to the parent layer.
in the Tools panel.
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User Guide