Follow Path

Attach a layer to a Shape layer's contour so it rides along it, keyframing how far along the path it has travelled instead of where it is.

Follow Path constrains a layer's anchor to sit on a Shape layer's contour, and lets you animate its position along that contour instead of animating X and Y by hand. It is built for things that travel a fixed route: a car on a road, a leaf on a curled vine, a bead sliding along a wire.

Attaching a layer to a path#

Open the Properties panel for the layer that should move and find the Follow Path row, directly under Anchor. Pick the target from the Follow Path combo, which lists every Shape layer with at least two points; a layer can never follow itself, so it is left off its own list. The button beside the combo arms a viewport picker instead: click any path in the canvas to target it, or press Esc to cancel.

Progress along the path#

Progress is how far along the path the layer sits, as a percentage of the path's length. On an open path it clamps between 0% and 100%: the layer stops at either end. On a closed path it wraps instead: Progress becomes a signed value from -100% to 100%, negative running backwards, and a separate lap counter next to it (-999 to 999) tracks whole trips around the loop, so you can send a layer around more than once without it snapping back to 0%.

Distance is measured along the actual curve length, not by the path's underlying bezier math, so equal steps of Progress move the layer equal distances even where the path's control points bunch up around a tight curve.

Orientation and offset#

Turn on Orient to path and the layer rotates to match the path's direction of travel at its current position, so a car banks into the curve instead of sliding along it sideways. This orientation is added on top of the layer's own Rotation value, not a replacement for it. You can still spin the layer with its ordinary Rotation keyframes while it follows the path.

An additional degrees offset lets you rotate that facing without touching Rotation itself, useful when your artwork does not point along its own local X axis. It has no numeric field in Properties; you set it by keyframing the Follow Path sub-track directly, in the Timeline or the Graph Editor.

Elasticity#

Elasticity bends the layer along the path instead of letting it ride it rigid. At 0% the layer keeps its shape, as before. At 100% every part of it lies in the curve of the path, the way a snake follows the line it travels: the head goes where the path goes, the body and tail come through the same bends after it, and the layer keeps its thickness. Values in between bend it part of the way. The Elasticity field sits under Orient to path, runs from 0% to 100%, and starts at 0%. Elasticity has a key diamond and a Follow Path sub-track of its own, so a layer can straighten out as it comes to a stop.

Every kind of layer bends: shapes, groups with everything inside them, meshes with the layers they hold, pictures, raster and pixel layers, and videos. The bend shows in Edit mode too; the layer's nodes and selection box stay on its own, unbent outline, which is what editing changes. Along a straight stretch of path nothing bends.

Keyframing progress#

Progress carries the same inline key diamond as any other animatable field in Properties, and Auto Key arms it the same way. Animate Progress from 0% to 100% over a run of frames and the layer travels the whole path at whatever pace your easing gives it; hold it steady and the layer parks at one point on the path.

Turn on Motion Blur for the layer and, once Progress or Elasticity has at least two keys, it blurs along the path as the layer travels, bending with the layer when it has Elasticity. See Motion blur.

While a layer follows a path its anchor sits exactly on the path, so the layer's own Position does not move it: Position keyframes take effect again once the layer stops following.