Repetile repeats a layer into a field of copies — a grid that runs past the layer’s own edges, or a ring, a wave, a spiral or a scatter — and staggers what every copy does. It is the reason to reach for this instead of duplicating a layer ten times: the field is one layer, so it moves, animates, keyframes and takes effects as a single thing.
It is a Layer Effect in the Pattern pack, free, and it works on any visual layer with a real layer box (not 3D models, which come back from the 3D pass on a neutral full-frame quad with no box to lay a field out in).
The field
Expand Left / Right / Up / Down add tiles in each direction from the original, which stays exactly where the transform put it — so the grid is (1 + left + right) × (1 + up + down) tiles. The four counts are keyframable and read fractionally: 2.4 is two full rings plus a third at 40% opacity, so a 0 → 5 track grows the field ring by ring instead of stepping.
Spacing X / Y is the pitch as a percentage of the layer box: 100 means tiles touch, above that leaves gaps, below overlaps. It never resizes the artwork — Tile Scale (1–800%) is the only thing that does, and Scale Falloff ramps it across the field.
Tile Bounds decides what one tile is. Content measures the tight alpha bounds of the layer’s own raster, which is what you want on text and motion layers: those draw into a composition-sized plate, so the raw layer box is the whole frame and tiling it would produce a single frame-sized tile with the neighbours off screen. Layer plate tiles the full quad including its empty margin.
The field is laid out in the layer’s own box space, so a rotated or scaled layer tiles along its own axes.
Tilings and layouts
Tiling offers eight true tilings and four layouts.
The tilings fill a rectangular grid: Repeat, Unfold (mirror both axes — every seam matches, so this is the one to use on artwork that does not tile), Mirror H, Mirror V, Brick H (odd rows shifted by the Brick Offset), Brick V (a half-drop), Brick + Mirror and Pinwheel (each tile turned 90° by its position).
The four layouts keep the same tile set the Expand counts describe and place it on a figure instead of a grid:
| Layout | What it draws |
|---|---|
| Radial | One ring per grid ring, tiles spaced evenly around it — an ellipse when Spacing X and Y differ. |
| Wave | The grid riding a sine. |
| Spiral | A phyllotaxis sunflower. |
| Random | A scatter over the field’s extent, reproducible from the seed. |
The original stays at the centre of every figure, so switching layouts never moves the artwork. Layout Spread sizes the figure (100 puts the outermost tile where the grid’s outermost ring would have been) and Turns / Cycles coils it — spiral turns, wave cycles across the field, or a whole-turn rotation of the rings. Orient Tiles turns each copy to face along the figure. Mirror flips and brick offsets do not apply in these modes.
Every figure is absolute in the tile’s own coordinate, never normalised by the drawn extent, so a keyframed Expand grows a ring without re-placing the tiles already on screen.
Per-tile stagger
Stagger Order — Columns, Rows, Diagonal, Radial, Random or Columns mirrored — chooses the index everything else counts along.
- Rotate Stagger adds its angle once per tile, so the field fans out from the original instead of turning as a block. Rotate turns every tile together.
- Scale Falloff and Opacity Falloff ramp across the field.
- Scale Random, Rotate Random, Opacity Random, Jitter X and Jitter Y scatter it, all reproducible from Random Seed.
Growing the grid does not re-roll anything: each tile’s random draws are hashed from its own position in the field, so tiles already on screen hold their jitter, scale and rotation while new rings fade in.
The entrance
Reveal is the entrance, and the parameter to keyframe. Each tile arrives after a delay set by Stagger Spread, starting from From Scale / From Rotate / From Offset Y and easing in with Reveal Easing.
Reveal Type picks the pose a tile arrives from:
- Fade — opacity only.
- Pop — starts at 15% scale and overshoots on the scale channel whatever easing is picked.
- Rise — starts half a layer-height below.
- Spin — starts at 40% scale, turned 180°.
- From Center — the tile collapses onto the original’s own centre and travels out to its cell, so the field blooms out of the artwork.
All five land on exactly the same finished field at Reveal 100.
Include Original decides whether the layer itself joins the entrance. Left on, Reveal 0 hides the whole thing so the field builds on from nothing. Turned off, the entrance belongs to the copies and the layer you positioned sits it out at full opacity in its finished pose — it never blinks.
Motion
- Scroll X / Y drift the whole field for a seamless scrolling pattern. They are rates, so a keyframed track is integrated over clip time and a ramp accelerates the field smoothly instead of teleporting it.
- Wave Amount with Wave Axis (Y, X, Radial, Rotate or Scale), Wave Length and Wave Speed runs a travelling wave through the per-tile offset, rotation or scale.
- Play Delay lags each tile’s picture behind the layer’s own along the stagger order, so a grid of a video plays as a canon rather than 25 identical frames in lockstep. The head of the stagger order plays live and its tail lags by the full delay. It replays a small ring of recorded plates, so it fills in during playback and export while a fresh seek shows the live frame until the ring catches up, and the field softens slightly while it is on.
Finishing
Tint, Tint Amount and Tint Spread (By order / Random / Alternate) colour tiles across the field; Tile Blend composites them Normal, Add or Screen; Stack Order decides which tile draws on top. Clip to Cell clips every tile to its cell (true CC RepeTile) or lets rotated and oversized tiles overlap. Edge Sampling decides what a tile shows where it reaches past the layer box, and Blend Borders softens the seams.
Effect Amount is the master: it fades the added tiles only, leaving the original at full opacity, and 0 is an exact bypass.
Presets
Three presets start you in the new layouts: Ring Burst, Sunflower and Scatter Pop.
Where it runs
Repetile runs after the layer’s Overlay Effects chain and Running Glow, and before Motion Blur — so each tile carries the layer’s finished look (glow, defocus and chain included) rather than each tile being styled separately.
Keyframing
Nearly everything numeric keyframes, including the four Expand counts, Reveal, the spacings, the layout spread and turns, the falloffs and the tint. Three deliberately do not: Random Seed (a changed seed re-rolls every draw, so an animated one strobes), Wave Speed and Play Delay (both are slot lookups, so a moving value would jump rather than accelerate). Scroll X / Y are rates and are integrated.
Where to go next
- Layer Effects
- Grid Builder — lay several different layers out by a rule
- Group Editing and Distributors
- Keyframe Builder
Leave a Reply