The definitive collection of scripts and plugins for Adobe After Effects
Zorro-The Layer Tagger
Version: 1.5 Sign up to be notified by email when a new version of this script is posted
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.
New for CS5: Layer color label support!
Please watch the video tutorial to familiarize yourself with Zorro.
Version History (click ? on the script palette to find the version):
- 1.5 Added label color option for CS5 and fixed UI issues for CS5 07/2010
- 1.23 Fixed minor cosmetic comma bug in marker 04/2010
- 1.22 Fixed tag dropdown bug 01/2009
- 1.21 Fixed Advanced Search arrow on Windows 10/2008
- 1.2 tag prefix change 10/2008
- 1.0 initial release – 09/2008
Get notified of new scripts + plugins
WOW. really well done. When I first read the description, I thought tagging may be overkill, but the movie shows how incredibly useful this is. Can’t wait to play with it in a gnarly comp.
Thanks again!
to make a long story short:great work.
thanks so much.
rassel
Good stuff and very generous.
Hey, the fullscreen button isn’t working here though it does when embedded elsewhere.
thanks for another great one, and getting some of more feature requests in
Thanks for pointing that out Rich, wordpress was doing some auto reformatting, but i’ve fixed it.
Thanks alot!!! super handy!! As always!
Cheers
Thanks a lot for sharing this great tool, I’ll try it soon
i think my life will be really easier with a better timeline organization!
And obviously thanks for giving your work away for free.
This is fantastic. It’s a function that you’d think should have been built into AE a long time ago. Thank you for your generosity.
Beauty.
Wow, Lloyd, this is really gorgeous. Excellent work my friend! Thank you Thank YOU THANK YOU
brilliant
Awesome! Will be downloading.
One thing… can you refer to the tags through expressions? That would be very powerful indeed. (Sorry if I sound greedy!)
I don’t think you can access the comments field through expressions, but you can access the layers markers. So as long as you mirror the tags on a layer marker you could access the tags through expressions.
THANK YOU!
I’ve been waiting over a decade (in vain) for Adobe to implement some sort of “Folder” solution – your Zorro is far more brilliant!
Cheers!
fantastic addition to after effects
thank you sir
j
This is a great one! I can see me using it a lot in the future.
It just gives me a warm feeling that there are people out there like you who do this out of pure generosity, thus making our (mograph) world a better place.
You definitely deserve a LOT of beers for this one!
WOW, IT’S VERY AWSOME SCRIPT…
BUT IT CAN’T WORK IN MY COMPUTER.
I THINK THIS PROBLEM IS UNICODE…
MY WINDOW IS KOREAN LANGUAGE…
Hi Spencer,
The new version now uses the asterisk instead of the bullet as a tag prefix, please download the new version and let me know how it works for you.
Thanks!!! Lloyd
Finally I success!!
This is an amazing work! I just found this site and… – wow! THANK YOU
THIS IS SO GREAT! THANK YOU!!!
The only problem is that the script only looks for tags in the active comp. If I have tags in precomps it ignores them. Is there a way to make the script work global with all precomps?
By default I seem to have a black background when I choose to isolate a comp via solo or shy. Any way to change this? This script seems to be ignoring my comp’s currently set background colour which makes it hard to deal with black text.
Thanks dude, great script.
I wanted to know, Can I “import” my tags somewhere to give them to a friend, or work on an other computer ?
@Judas – The tags are stored in the comments field for each layer so if your friend opens your comp and runs Zorro it will automatically detect all the tags.
Hey Lloyd,
This is an awesome script, a true time-saver, but I’m having a problem sometimes in that when it launches it seems to trip a script error, which launches Script Toolkit – then I OK through that and it works, but then sometimes does it again when changing tabs.
I’m using AE CS3 on OS-X (10.4.11) – any ideas?
Thanks,
Sean
None of your scripts are showing up in my Window Menu. I’m using Snow Leopard and AE CS4. I did place the scripts into the UIScript Panels folder. Any ideas? Is Snow Leopard messing things up? I used to scripts on my Windows machine with no problems.
It’s ScriptUI Panels
Sorry, I just wrote it wrong here. The folder is named “ScriptUI Panels”. It was already there so I didn’t need to make it. I just watched your talk from AENY. I’m eager to start using some of your scripts. Still doesn’t work though.
Nice solution! I O U a beer!
where is the download link ?
http://aescripts.com/faq/how-to-download-scripts/
Very useful. You really shoud add the possibility of showing/hiding selected layers in all compositions in project or at least in nested comps. I’m using it fo multilanguage presentation and showing all *en woud be very helpfull.
Works fine in CS5
First off, great script!
A suggestion for future versions, maybe have an option to turn off visibility of tagged layers. Say if I wanted to turn off visibility of layers with lots of effects, currently you’d have to apply a tag to all layers then apply a different tag (say
I have an odd situation with the Tagger in CS5. I have not needed to use this since I upgraded (about 2 months ago). I tried it about a week ago. It did not seem to work. The odd thing was that a little spot which looks like an exclamation point showed up in the middle of my screen. It would not go away until I restarted AE. When I started the project this week, I purchased another copy of the tagger thinking it was a CS5 thing. the dialog box did appear, but disappeared once I went into another program and then came back. The exclamation point thingy was then on the screen. So as it turns out, it the other one was working, but there is some sort of video conflict happening here. I am on a MacPro4,1 – Quad-Core Intel Xeon but am using a stock NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. I’m not sure if this is a card issue or not. I will hopefully be moving up to a better card shortly. But in the current time, any ideas on how I might keep the tagger up front?
Zorro needs to be installed in the ScriptUI Panels folder and run from the Window menu as described here: http://aescripts.com/faq/how-to-install-and-run-scripts/
Once installed and run this way should avoid the issue you are experiencing.
This script is nice but it crawls. I see it’s use on large comps but in my comp of 300+ (set to wireframe) layers it takes 41 seconds each time. I really like the idea but it’s just too slow.
That is unusually slow. I’ve used with comps that have 1000 layers and it was a neglible wait time for the operations. What operation are you trying? Maybe that is the time it takes the comp to redraw if you are soloing items.
Ok. I take it back. Even though it’s slow to start once it’s working it’s outrageously cool. With Zorro I’m able to comfortably work on a comp with 300+ layers.
Zorro works really really well!
I’m having trouble believing that my experience with Zorro is so different from everyone else.
AE CS4 on IntelMBP Core2 Duo OSX 10.68.
If you don’t deselect the layers that are lit before selecting another selection list, those still lit layers get added to the selection list you have just clicked.
I have now spent more time fixing things than I have saved (or probably ever will).
I must be doing something wrong.
Thoughts?
There’s 3 buttons. The minus (-) button will remove the layers from the selection, the “Select” button will replace the currently selected layers with any layers that match the tag and the plus (+) will keep whatever is selected and add any matching tags to the selection. From your description it sounds like you are pressing the plus (+) button instead of the “Select” button.
Dude that is amazing!
I was wondering if you could expand that further. For example in Photoshop there are scripts which allow you to export pictures based on the layer comps. Can you to do the same with After effects, I wonder
Sorry, I don’t think I understand your question.