Creating animations by nesting compositions

Nesting is useful when you want to apply a single transform property to a layer in more than one way. It adds another opportunity to apply masks, effects, or transform changes.

To nest a composition:

Drag a composition icon from the Project window into another composition in the Timeline window.

Note: If the target composition is currently active in the Composition window, you can also drag the composition icon you want to nest directly into the Composition window.

For example, you could use nesting to make a planet both rotate and revolve (moving like the Earth, which spins on its own axis and also travels around the sun). By nesting, you can apply rotation to the planet in one composition and then move that composition into another composition containing the background. The planet composition becomes a new layer in the composition containing the background. You can then apply rotation to this new layer to make it revolve.

Another way to configure this example would be to use parenting. (See Understanding parent layers.)