aescripts + aeplugins

basem alideeb

Hi Casey,

Definitely this should be my favorite script ever.

After testing this script for several hours, I think there should be a CleanUp button in order to clean up markers for every selected layers and makes them ready to Triggers again.

OR

Update button in order to update the markers

Peter Baker

Hey, Casey,

This is not a comment about the product, just about the video. Since this is not a one-use internal video (at a biz conference for example), you need to be very careful when using licensed music, especially when it comes to making money on your products. 

You could find yourself either in a "cease and desist" situation, or worse, a retroactive lawsuit. 

Thanks for your time,

Peter Baker

Casey Baker

Thank you for the kind words Basem, I will take your feature requests into account for future releases. I think a CleanUp button would fit nicely into the Trigger architecture. Hope you continue to enjoy using Trigger. Trigger has become a tool I and my coworkers use multiple times a day and I'm happy to see others enjoying its time-saving functionalities. 

Hi Casey,

Definitely this should be my favorite script ever.

After testing this script for several hours, I think there should be a CleanUp button in order to clean up markers for every selected layers and makes them ready to Triggers again.

OR

Update button in order to update the markers

ben toh

Good useful script, using the trial, i hit my first roadblock...what if i have numerous nested comps and the one that i need to control is right a the end of the nest. do i have to create a trigger null for each parent comps?

Casey Baker

Hey Ben, the answer to your question is yes. The script will reference a trigger null one level down in the heirarchy. You need to have a trigger null at each level of your nested comps this way you can control a set of animations nested inside a comp from the master comp. If you have any further questions I would be happy to record a screencast for you. Reference the end of my turorial where I show how to create trigger comps within trigger comps. Cheers

Good useful script, using the trial, i hit my first roadblock...what if i have numerous nested comps and the one that i need to control is right a the end of the nest. do i have to create a trigger null for each parent comps?

James Scott

Just to quibble, 20% off of $59.99 would make the sale price $47.99. But it looks like a handy script either way.

Trevor Gilchrist

Looks incredible. Definitely buying.

Off-topic question, if that's ok?: what mac setup are you running? I know some of the video was speeded up, but your AE environment still seems extremely responsive copared to mine. I'm on an i7 iMac 4GHz 5K, 32Gb ram and a Promise raid on Thunderbolt 2 and everything's STILL so sluggish by comparison.

Many thanks. And looking forward to using Trigger.

Trevor Gilchrist

Looks incredible. Definitely buying.

Off-topic question, if that's ok?: what mac setup are you running? I know some of the video was speeded up, but your AE environment still seems extremely responsive compared to mine. I'm on an i7 iMac 4GHz 5K, 32Gb ram and a Promise raid on Thunderbolt 2 and everything's STILL so sluggish by comparison.

Many thanks. And looking forward to using Trigger.

Casey Baker

Hey Trevor I glad you like Trigger! I'm running on a 5K iMac with 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, 32GB memory, 2TB Fusion Drive, 1TB Flash Storage

Looks incredible. Definitely buying.

Off-topic question, if that's ok?: what mac setup are you running? I know some of the video was speeded up, but your AE environment still seems extremely responsive compared to mine. I'm on an i7 iMac 4GHz 5K, 32Gb ram and a Promise raid on Thunderbolt 2 and everything's STILL so sluggish by comparison.

Many thanks. And looking forward to using Trigger.

basem alideeb

Is it possible to add an option in order to let us choose the "Fade of in/out" Marker ? ,in order to prevent the "cut" between the movements especially while using the wiggle effect.

I think that would be too complicated ,but it would be really nice if you could add it

Kevin Burke

Hi Casey,

I just wanted to let you know I've been using Trigger since you released it and I love it. It's a regular part of my motion design arsenal. I work on animating user interface a lot so it's perfect for that. Thank you for your hard work!

Trevor Gilchrist

Hey Trevor I glad you like Trigger! I'm running on a 5K iMac with 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, 32GB memory, 2TB Fusion Drive, 1TB Flash Storage

then why oh why is your AE interface so responsive, and mine is still like running in molasses? We have practically the same setup... Is there a particular source of wisdom you turn to for AE optimisation/config? I've been doing this since AE was Coda, and I really thought this rig would put me in the speedy category... but alas. 

Trevor Gilchrist

Casey. Thank you. I have a complex project management app to animate (prototype) and now I'm starting to understand the nuances and power of Trigger, it's a TRUE lifesaver.

Question: Am I correct in understanding that the creation of CUSTOM triggers inside a nested pre comp requires that multiple animations don't overlap?

Example: 

1. I have two shape layers (in a nested pre comp, of course), each separately taking 1min to move right to left 400px.
   
2. I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 1 and call the Trigger "Move 1"
3. I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 2 and call the Trigger "Move 2"
4. Return to the parent comp and there are my two triggers, working perfectly
5. UNTIL, I drag "Move 2" to a time during "Move 1", in which case the move "Move 1" resets and starts over.

I'm assuming because you're using time remapping on parent the pre comp to allow this great functionality, Trigger won't allow simultaneous motion to be drawn from within the one pre comp?. If "Move 1" takes 1min to execute, then "Move 2" simply can't begin until after "Move 1" has completed. They can be swapped and separated etc, but not overlapped. Right?

The workaround is simply to create one pre comp for each of the moves. Hardly an inconvenience and allows TOTAL control, including overlapping, but just wanted to check and (if I'm right) might be worth letting folks know, so they don't have to drink three beers like I did before the answer became apparent :-)

Now, hopefully, I'm wrong and I'm just missing a step, and I can have all my shapes in one pre comp, but please let me know.

thanks again

Casey Baker

Hey Trevor glad you are enjoying Trigger! You are 100% correct this whole process relies on timeremapping trickery. So I like to think of it as I am capturing an animation event (any animation that occurs between two markers). When I flow out a complex motion prototype I usually try to create my animation events in the same sequence as I want to use them in the prototyping flow. Inside my nested precomp I usually leave 20-30 seconds in between each interaction just in case later I want to add something in between and create a new trigger to add to my flow. You are absolutely correct in the sense that that animations can be swapped or separated but not overlapped without duplicating your nested precomp layer because the timeremapping expression only knows to play until it reaches the next marker inside the comp. Hope this helps.

Casey. Thank you. I have a complex project management app to animate (prototype) and now I'm starting to understand the nuances and power of Trigger, it's a TRUE lifesaver.
Question: Am I correct in understanding that the creation of CUSTOM triggers inside a nested pre comp requires that multiple animations don't overlap?
Example: 
I have two shape layers (in a nested pre comp, of course), each separately taking 1min to move right to left 400px.
I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 1 and call the Trigger "Move 1"I set a custom trigger from the first position keyframe of shape 2 and call the Trigger "Move 2"Return to the parent comp and there are my two triggers, working perfectlyUNTIL, I drag "Move 2" to a time during "Move 1", in which case the move "Move 1" resets and starts over.I'm assuming because you're using time remapping on parent the pre comp to allow this great functionality, Trigger won't allow simultaneous motion to be drawn from within the one pre comp?. If "Move 1" takes 1min to execute, then "Move 2" simply can't begin until after "Move 1" has completed. They can be swapped and separated etc, but not overlapped. Right?
The workaround is simply to create one pre comp for each of the moves. Hardly an inconvenience and allows TOTAL control, including overlapping, but just wanted to check and (if I'm right) might be worth letting folks know, so they don't have to drink three beers like I did before the answer became apparent :-)
Now, hopefully, I'm wrong and I'm just missing a step, and I can have all my shapes in one pre comp, but please let me know.
thanks again

Casey Baker

Hey Kevin thanks that means a lot! I started animating with markers a few years ago and it completely changed they way I animate, I glad to be able to share this tool with the world. Also, be on the lookout for my next tool React!

Hi Casey,

I just wanted to let you know I've been using Trigger since you released it and I love it. It's a regular part of my motion design arsenal. I work on animating user interface a lot so it's perfect for that. Thank you for your hard work!

Trevor Gilchrist

OK. I just felt like I had to stop in the middle of my (very complex) project and write about Trigger.

It takes a little while for the Trigger concept and mindset to sink in. I've been using AE since it was CODA. I've seen everything develop. Scripts have filled me with anticipation, then disappointed horribly. (Not all of them, of course...)

But this Trigger is something else. After ALL THESE YEARS, I'm finding myself voluntarily and willingly UNthinking the way I've always worked, and REthinking how I work in the context of Trigger. 

You HAVE to give it time. I hope the author makes some more videos — examples of Trigger doing different things in different ways, from simple to complex. The Tutorial posted here is great, but fast-paced and has to be watched ten times more after you start trying to use Trigger, so that the details sink in.

But they do, eventually.

It's changing how I build my comps and my pre comps. My timelines look very different now. Markers used to be impotent little reminders that I used to try and map where my animation started and stopped — on the whole, clunky, dumb and inflexible. Now, markers ARE the animation — at least, they are the objects I am now using, moving and re-arranging to make my animation.

It's a whole new way to get the job done. It's a better way, imho. I hope it keeps getting better. I know I'm still an amateur as far as its use is concerned, so I'm hoping for more screencast examples. 

Just give it a try. If you're building complex, challenging projects — particularly projects that you just KNOW are going to need re-timing and re-jigging — this is an absolute revolution. Best 60 bucks I've spent in a LONG while.

My 2¢

Trevor Gilchrist

When you say it's "important to encase any single animation between two layer markers" can you expand on that for me please, maybe with a quick example? I've been running into problems organizing the animations in my pre comps in such a way that the triggers behave correctly in the parent comp.

For instance; a simple animated color change that's supposed to occur simultaneously with a position change for a shape layer. The shape layer can be set to change from green to blue as it moves 500px up, that's trigger 1. Then blue to green as it moves 500 pixels down = trigger 2. But moving Trigger 2 before trigger 1 in the parent comp causes an inevitable sudden position jump. So it's important, as far as I can see, that pre comps are constructed in such a way that all animations actually happen in the order they will eventually be used in the parent comp. The examples you show in the tutorial all use animations that either start from a shared point, or that start off-screen. 

If I'm correct in the above thinking, it's an important point that I've had to discover the hard way and causes precomps to have to be built a certain way.

If I'm wrong, please tell me how I should be doing it :-)

Trevor Gilchrist

Did I say something wrong? I thought I was leaving positive feedback...

Jonathan Pelc

Hi, I'm wondering if I need a Trigger script for every computer that runs a Triggered project? I design a lot of L3's and other graphics that get updated throughout the year by various coworkers on different machines. So what I'm asking is can I get a license for myself, set up the project with triggers, and hand it off to someone else and they will be able to use the project? Or do I need a license for each machine?

Casey Baker

Hey Trevor, apologies for the late response. You are absolutely correct in thinking that you want to build your precomp animations in roughly the same sequence or order that you want to use them in your master comp to avoid the timeremapping "jump" that you are eluding to. I usually separate all animation events in my precomp by a least 30 seconds. This helps you because later down the road you may decide that you want to add more interactions or animation triggers in between others that you have already created, this gives you room to scale up and add more complexity to your animation flows without having to move a bunch of layers around in your precomp. To elaborate further on your earlier question it's important to encase any animation between two markers because when an animation is triggered from the nested precomp layer (the global comp with all the animations inside it) the script will use timeremapping to play from the layer marker called until it reaches the next layer marker or the end of the comp if no other marker is found. If you have multiple animations between two layer markers both animations will play when you call that animation.  I make every interaction its own encased animation event, say for example I have a menu coming in from the left then 10 seconds later it animates back to its original position, I would add one marker for the In Transtion at the beginning and one marker for Leave Transition, depending on if you have more animations following the Leave Transition, I usually use a marker named "hold" after the leave animation. This will keep the animation from continuing to play other unwanted animation that occur after the leave transition. Does that make sense? 

When you say it's "important to encase any single animation between two layer markers" can you expand on that for me please, maybe with a quick example? I've been running into problems organizing the animations in my pre comps in such a way that the triggers behave correctly in the parent comp.

For instance; a simple animated color change that's supposed to occur simultaneously with a position change for a shape layer. The shape layer can be set to change from green to blue as it moves 500px up, that's trigger 1. Then blue to green as it moves 500 pixels down = trigger 2. But moving Trigger 2 before trigger 1 in the parent comp causes an inevitable sudden position jump. So it's important, as far as I can see, that pre comps are constructed in such a way that all animations actually happen in the order they will eventually be used in the parent comp. The examples you show in the tutorial all use animations that either start from a shared point, or that start off-screen. 

If I'm correct in the above thinking, it's an important point that I've had to discover the hard way and causes precomps to have to be built a certain way.

If I'm wrong, please tell me how I should be doing it :-)

Casey Baker

Hey Jonathan, Trigger will work if you use it in one AE project file and pass the file off to any machine without a trigger license. That being said if one of your coworkers wants to create new trigger comps and markers they will need their own license. If they are just editing the work you setup for them then you won't need additional licenses. Hope that answers your question

Hi, I'm wondering if I need a Trigger script for every computer that runs a Triggered project? I design a lot of L3's and other graphics that get updated throughout the year by various coworkers on different machines. So what I'm asking is can I get a license for myself, set up the project with triggers, and hand it off to someone else and they will be able to use the project? Or do I need a license for each machine?

Trevor Gilchrist

I'm sure anyone reading this would assume I was on the Trigger payroll, but I'm not. It's just that I think fellow AE practitioners who take the trouble to create a product that truly enhances our workflow and alleviate our anxiety, deserves as much positive feedback in print as it's possible to give.

I've just embarked on another app prototype which is (to over-simplify) the most advanced, track-based animation I've ever had to manage. MANY objects moving in a time-based world. Stopping, starting, appearing to be related in their movement. No room for error. 

I tried it the "old way" — tying various groups of objects to mutiple moving nulls; cutting layers to break parenting; breaking again to pick up the time-based motion. Hundreds of layers. Hundreds of cuts and nulls. Absolute bloody nightmare. Take my eye off the ball for a few hours and I'd have to re-familiarize myself once again with the multiple interactions before getting up to speed. Almost too much to bear.

And then there's the Trigger approach.

A handful of pre comps. Some prep work on the object movements setting up the defaults and Triggers within those comps (far less work than ever before), then I'm ready to just start moving Trigger markers around in the master comp; syncing starts and stops with almost guilty ease. And effortlessly editable. A bit more hold here... Add 5 seconds here... Start this with that rather than the original...

Turns it into a satisfying process of orchestration, in the knowledge that one isn't locking the animation with every cut and keyframe.

Hats off Mr Bakes. Kudos to you.

I can't imagine any serious professional regretting buying this product.

Gunnar Selm

You sir, have made my professional life so much easier!

Thanks you

ismail AIT TOULBA

Hi,
I recently purchased Trigger ! Great product, thanks for making this available !
I don't have a direct question about Trigger but rather about the markers, can i change the marker's position from a text layer ? i don't want to change the markers manually but rather link them to text layer, in witch i'll write the desired position.
Any idea ?
Thanks
Ismail

mike axel

You have to make undo group for apply and other actions of the script! Really!

David Crowther

Hi Casey.

Quick question, the script looks amazing and I'm going to look into using it for my next complicated project. One thing that interested me is that you obviously had several animations in a comp, rigged the triggers and then you can change them by changing the marker. 

Is it possible for me to go back into a pre-comp once you've already generated a trigger and add new ones indefinitely? Also, does the re-timing mean that Triggr takes longer to process on larger comps?

Thanks in advance! 

Casey Baker

David Crowther said:

Hi Casey.

Quick question, the script looks amazing and I'm going to look into using it for my next complicated project. One thing that interested me is that you obviously had several animations in a comp, rigged the triggers and then you can change them by changing the marker. 

Is it possible for me to go back into a pre-comp once you've already generated a trigger and add new ones indefinitely? Also, does the re-timing mean that Triggr takes longer to process on larger comps?

Thanks in advance! 

Hey David, the answer is yes. You can create any number of additional triggers after you have created your trigger. The comp will retime according to the matching layer marker so just make sure the new ones created have a matching marker name markers on the precomp layer. Also I haven't noticed any processing concerns as you have larger and larger comps. I animate everything with markers and I have had enormous layered precomps and I haven't noticed any performance hit attributed to using triggers.

Nick Ritter

Fantastic Script! Any way to add some functionality? I'd love it if the script kept a list of all available markers (or maybe only ones made by it) to call quickly instead of having to retype the same markers over and over again. Also could settings could be saved on each marker? And by settings I mean whether or not the marker will be copied to the parent comp.

Again, great script, I've used it on every project since purchase (about 12 projects).

Thanks!

Phil Aupperle

Love the script.  I'm using it with a large team to build a huge number of very elaborate UI animations for VFX.  Quick question: Is there a way to automatically push ALL the trigger markers on a null up to the remapped layer at once, rather than just doing it one by one, as they're created?   We're building a huge toolkit of animations, and we'd like to be able to re-use them without having to re-create all the top-level layer markers individually.  It's much easier to delete markers we don't need that it is to find and re-create all the right tags later.  Maybe I've just missed how to do this in the tutorials.

Fantastic script--thanks for making it available!

dogus aslan

tried to delete the comment but Its there empty, so my initial question was can it be used to trigger the same animation over and over again, as long as its in a precomp, yep its possible

Drake Schaberg

Casey,

Cool script. Any chance for an upcoming update? 

Say within a precomp I have an "AnimateIn" marker and an "AnimateOut". When I go back to the main comp is there a way to time stretch or squash the time remapping by moving the "AnimateOut" marker closer or further from "AnimateIn"?

[Deleted User]

casey,

i am very interested in this plugin.

the way you explained it is quite monotonous.

would you mind simplifying the terms of understanding its uses for me? 

Frank Lamont

Could you please fix the licensing issue for Catalina?

Thanks,

Frank

Robert Penczak

Could you please compare the functionality of Trigger with that of Marker Remap? https://aescripts.com/marker-remap/ 

Does Trigger offer similar but more robust functionality?

Are the two complementary in any manner - or would you just need on or the other - and if so, could you spell out the benefits of Trigger?

Thanks.

Harold Durnez

How could one use this tool (or any other) to trigger an expression function using markers?

 

Antoine Pelgrand Kostadinoff

Hey, I'm having an image bump 1 frame before each marker. Same issue on both ae 19 and 20.
Using the 1.6 version.

Andrew Olivares

Looks amazing! If someone who doesn't have the plugin opens up my project file, will they be able to use the trigger markers or have any problems?

Thor The God of thunder

Harold Durnez said:

How could one use this tool (or any other) to trigger an expression function using markers?

 

(not sure about markers) I guess that can be done using expression timeline 2.

Jon Lutjens

Are there any plans to make this compatible with AE 2022?