Author Archive

Zorro makes selection and isolation sets easy and possible in after effects by adding  tags to layers.  Similar to the way you would tag photos in Flickr, you can tag layers in your comps and then select or isolate those layers in groups by using the tags.

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Based on a request over at the creative cow, this script will launch a project or template every time your start After Effects.  For example, if you have a certain folder/file structure you like to keep for your AE projects, you can setup a virgin project the way you like it and save it as a template by giving it a .aet extension.  Now every time you launch AE your custom setup will be automatically loaded.

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Based on a request on the AE-List, this script will render (actually send to the render queue) any frames that are marked by layer markers.  This would be equivalent to going to a point in time in your comp and selecting “Save Frame As->File”.

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We are expanding the Throttle family based on a user request to have quick access to the video preview preferences.  You will need to select an Output Device and Output Mode first in  Preferences->Video Preview.  Once you’ve done that you will be able to control the rest of the settings from the script.

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Randomly selects layers. There’s 4 options for how many layers are selected randomly:  You can randomly select most of the layers, many of the layers, not many and finally you can have it randomly select very few of the layers.

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With the 8.0.2 update After Effects introduced 2 very important but not very well publicized or easy to modify preferences that are crucial to proper throttling of AE, so I updated Throttle to include these prefs to make them easy to access and modify. Secondly i removed the purge option since I learned that there is a keyboard shortcut for Purge:   Ctrl-Alt-/ (on number pad) or Cmd-Option-/ on mac.

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Based on a user request over at the creative cow, Nth Layer Selector will select every Nth layer.  
If you have a set of layers already selected it will select every Nth layer from within that selection otherwise it will select every Nth layer from the whole comp.

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Based on a user request here on aescripts, CreateTrimmedAdjustmentLayer will create a new Adjustment Layer and trim it to the range of the selected layers.

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Based on a request over at http://aenhancers.com Trim to Layer Above will trim the layers that are selected to be the same length as the layer above it. This should be useful for track mattes, glows, tint layers, adjustment layers, difference layers, etc.

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Based on a request over at aehancers.com this script takes the selected layers and parents each one to the layer above it.

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Adds a user definable number of frames to the in and out points of the selected layers.

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Randomly shifts the selected layers in time within user defined range.

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Based on a request over at http://creativecow.com I joined 2 scripts that come with After Effects and added the Shutdown command when it’s all done.
This script will render all the items in your render queue, send you an email to let you know the render is done, save an incremental version of your project and shutdown the machine.  On Mac you can choose to have the machine sleep instead of shutdown.

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Based on a request over at http://aenhancers.com and using the same engine i built for Magnum this script scans the footage and removes the duplicate frames by setting hold keyframes on the layer’s time-remapping channel. I imagine this could come in handy on roto jobs where the footage has funky pulldown or any other occasion where you need to remove duplicate frames from a clip.

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The 8.0.2 update which mainly adds OSX “Leopard” support on mac among many bug fixes also adds a new preference which lets you indicate how many processors should be used when the Multiprocessing “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” is on. This is a very welcome addition for BG Renderer users that didn’t have enough RAM to handle all their processors, especially on  8-proc machines which should have a minimum of 16gb of RAM installed. Here’s the official blurb from Adobe:

Multiprocessing performance issues with multi-core machines, especially high-end 8-core hardware. When all 8 cores try to render a complex or memory intensive composition with Render Mutliple Frames Simultaneously, the application can become memory starved if each process has insufficient memory. To remedy this, there is a text preference to control the maximum number of cores that Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously will use. Open the text preference file and look in the ["MP"] section for: “MaxNumberOfProcesses” = “0″. “0″ is the default setting, which disables this preference setting. For better performance on an 8-core machine with 8GB RAM, for example, change the “0″ setting to “4″ and save the preference file and restart After Effects. This restricts multiprocessing with RenderMultiple Frames Simultaneously to 4 cores, each getting approximately 2GB of RAM.

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This script automatically detects edits in footage. To use it you simply select a footage layer in a comp, set the work area to the region you’d like to find edits and tell Magnum to go to work! Magnum can then split the layer at each edit point or set layer markers where the edits are. It works very well at the default detect level, but tricky footage might need this adjusted.

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Now that I find myself working in 32bit more often I found the routine of having to

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Welcome to AESCRIPTS!  This site is filled with lots of free useful  After Effects scripts written mostly by Lloyd Alvarez but it is also open to anyone who would like to use this site to host their scripts for free.  If you would like to host your after effects scripts here simply drop me an email at lloyd at aescripts dot com.  Hope you like the new site, please feel free to leave me feedback in the comments of this post.

This is the CS3 version of the BG Renderer. It now runs as an embedable panel that is saved as part of your workspace. It also utilizes the built in multiprocessing support that was added in CS3. This script takes whatever items are queued and ready in the render queue and sends them to render in the background allowing you to keep working in After Effects.

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This script takes whatever items are queued and ready in the render queue and sends them to render in the background allowing you to keep working in After Effects. This script only works with After Effects 7.

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Super simple script that distributes layers in 3D space within set ranges. (you can set the ranges by editing the script)

Download: 3D_Layer_Distributor

Arranges Selected Layers in a Grid with a choice to arrange them by Rows first (Left to Right) or by Columns first (Top to Bottom). Layers should all be the same size.

Download: Layers2Grid

Super simple script that generates text layers and distributes them in 3D space. You can define the words, and 3D ranges by editing the script. The script then asks how many words you like and will loop through your list to create them.

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Color Assigner adds a Fill effect to the selected layers and cycles through them and assigns preset colors. Color are defined in float (0..1). Color Ranger applies a color and then varies the hue by a defined range.

Download: Color Assigner |Color Ranger

Takes the selected Comps and adds a text layer stamp on top with the name of the Project. Project Info Stamp adds the Project Name, Date, Comp Name, Dimensions, PAR & FPS.

Download: Name Stamp | Info Stamp

These are versions of the Compify 720×486 script that work with Footage sources instead of Comps.
Basically this script takes any Footage Items that are selected in the Project window, creates new 720×486 D1 Comps, adds and resizes the footage item to fit and gives you the option to add them to the Render Queue. Also allows adding custom prefix and suffix to control the naming of the new items (vs. AE’s automated naming scheme that’s not always ideal)
The w_preset script (AE7 only) additionally allows you to add an animation preset.

Download:
FOOTAGE_COMPIFY-720×486 - creates a 720×486 Comp & adds the footage
FOOTAGE_COMPIFY-720×486_w_Preset-AE7 - Same as above with an anim. preset
FOOTAGE_COMPIFY_w_Preset-AE7 - Creates the comp at the same size as the footage

Fits selected layers (they can be different sizes and pixel aspect ratios) proportionally to fill the Comp frame by giving you the choice of either cropping or letterboxing.
Download: Fit2Frame

A lot of people like to work at 720×540 square pixels, but need to final output D1 aspect ratio 720×486. This usually involves a tedious process of creating a 720×486 D1 Comp, adding the 720×540 Comp to it and resizing it to fit. This script automates that process with the option of adding the new D1 comps to the Render Queue. The script also allows for user definable prefix and suffix to be added the names of the new 720×486 Comps. Basically the script takes any selected Comps (they can be any size, but i imagine the more common sizes will be 720×540 and 648×486) and puts them in a newly created 720×486 D1 Comp and resizes them to fit. It then asks you if you want to add these new Comps to the Render Queue.

*** New features in AE7 now allow adding an Animation Preset to the newly created Comp. Check the link below for that new script***

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I did a job where i had to take a huge number of shots and basically do the age-old “video love” effect where you duplicate the layer, blur it a bit and add a transfer mode.  I decided this would be the perfect job for me to figure out scripting, so I started with Byron Nash’s excellent compify script which makes comps out of all the footage in your project that you have selected and added the “Video Love” section to it.

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