aescripts + aeplugins

James Scott

Trying demo - Enter/Return key does not start a new line (does nothing).

CS6 Mac OS 10.10.5

Maybe I'm missing something, but as essentially a one trick monkey its $90 regular price seems high compared to the other similarly priced Monkeys which have much greater potential. I think the sale price would be much more in line with its capabilities, and so an intro special should be about $30. Just my two cents. Nice work as always.

Orrin Zucker

Hey James- 

Totally respect your opinion...Pricing is always tough - Overall our feeling is, if it saves you time on one job we think its earned its keep, and you still have to use in the future, so it'll keep paying dividends.

(We also we put it on a 50% intro sale so it was more in line with indie designer's budge). 

But, back to the the issue you're having...I see what you're saying. We'll check it out and make the fix.

Thanks! 

James Scott

Orrin Zucker said:

Hey James- 

Totally respect your opinion...Pricing is always tough - Overall our feeling is, if it saves you time on one job we think its earned its keep, and you still have to use in the future, so it'll keep paying dividends.

(We also we put it on a 50% intro sale so it was more in line with indie designer's budge). 

But, back to the the issue you're having...I see what you're saying. We'll check it out and make the fix.

Thanks! 

As a hobbyist who has never made a cent on the thousands of dollars that I have invested in not only Adobe products, but many others, I am definitely not the best one to rate the value of a product intended for professional use. I'm sure that MonkeyBars would save lots of time and effort for a busy professional. I was simply comparing it to the other Monkeys which seem to have more options and thus more potential for varied artistic output.

Cheers to you and Dan for all your great products.

Miika Turunen

Other Monkey products have OK prices. To be honest, even the discounted price feels bit high for this. Just a gut feeling. I think this should have the same price as MonkeyCamPro (full price), because this is not a "stand-alone" script like other Monkeys. This is one trick pony in my opinion. You would think that companies that work with big brands and dont have worries with money will just buy this kind of stuff... So I thought too, but reality has proven atleast for me that companies dont throw 90$ or even 50$ bucks on a script so easily. Obviously if you have a project where you would need to create MonkeyBar type of bars for hours this would be purchased. I dont think thats a big market though I'm bit frustrated creating bars like this on projects when ever I need to, but I dont feel like paying 45$ for the Monkey to do those couple minutes of work for me every now and then. I think the sweetspot for the price for any script or a plugin is where people see what it does and regardless of their current or known future projects are willing to pay for it. For an example I bought MonkeyCamPro without knowing any project that I would need it for. 

I'll hope you have good sales with this regardless of my gut feelings. 59$ -50% had been the price I would had jumped at this.

BTW can you have bars with round corners? 

Orrin Zucker

Miika Turunen said:

BTW can you have bars with round corners? 

Thanks for the feedback Miika- we will mull it over for sure.

BTW- You can make any box you want and swap it out by clicking the pre-comp button in the UI, then opening up the pre-comp and putting your art in there. Check the FAQs for more.

And if you only ever need a few text bars every now and then, I agree with you. If you need it a lot or if you just want to add to your bag of tricks you can offer your clients, then it might be worth it...

Orrin Zucker

James Scott said:

Trying demo - Enter/Return key does not start a new line (does nothing).

CS6 Mac OS 10.10.5

If you type in Control + Enter it should work on CS6 it should work. Thanks for pointing that out!

Marcin Mastykarz

no CS6? sorry, won't buy...

Orrin Zucker

Marcin Mastykarz said:

no CS6? sorry, won't buy...

Marcin- It does work in CS6, that was a mistake in setting up the page. Thanks for catching that!

The only difference with CS6 is you need to hit Control+Enter for a line break (everything past that version is just Enter)

James Scott

Orrin Zucker said:

James Scott said:

Trying demo - Enter/Return key does not start a new line (does nothing).

CS6 Mac OS 10.10.5

If you type in Control + Enter it should work on CS6 it should work. Thanks for pointing that out!

Works great. Thanks Orrin.

Ryan Vaznis

Hey, this seems like it'll be super useful. Any thoughts on adding an easy way to add a texture to the solid?

Are there any breaks on bulk pricing? Like, what if I need 10 licenses?

Orrin Zucker

Ryan Vaznis said:

Hey, this seems like it'll be super useful. Any thoughts on adding an easy way to add a texture to the solid?

Are there any breaks on bulk pricing? Like, what if I need 10 licenses?

Hey Ryan- 

Yeah- check out the FAQs. Theres a pre-comp option for the boxes, then you just open the pre-comp and drop the texture in there.

As far as bulk pricing, there will be after the sale...but it won't be as good as the intro special (20% is standard), so I think now would be the best deal.

Let me know if I could be of anymore help...and thanks for the support!

-oz

Jeremy Romero

Is there anyway to specifiy box width with text wrap?

Hans Christian Fürstenheim

I really thought this thing was much more advanced than this. It's very very simple. The animations and design options are way too limited in my opinion. With so few animation options and design controls this is just for hobbyists that quickly want to show some text for a youtube video. I had the naive idea that it was possible to make advanced looking lower thirds. I think this tool is overpriced, 

Orrin Zucker

Jeremy Romero said:

Is there anyway to specifiy box width with text wrap?

Jeremy- I'm not exactly sure what u mean by text wrap- the box size is determined by the text size, plus there's an additional expansion setting.

You can also add horizontal space using the space bar when setting the text, so you can extend the box off the raster if you want.

Let me know if that doesn't answer your question.

Oz

Gary Ellison

Can you put multiple lines of text in one big box? So I could, for example, put one whole paragraph within one box?

Thanks

Orrin Zucker

Gary Ellison said:

Can you put multiple lines of text in one big box? So I could, for example, put one whole paragraph within one box?

Thanks

Hey Gary- yeah, it's a bit of a workaround that I go over in the FAQs. https://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/monkeybars-faqs/

Lisa Overton

I have been jumping between comps with different pixel aspect ratios and now it seems I have done something that is making all my work compressed. I cannot simply stretch them because that throws the box proportions out of wack. It is happening with presets and default settings.

I have restarted AE. Restarted my computer. Problem persists. Is there a preferences file that has become corrupted that I can delete?

Orrin Zucker

Lisa Overton said:

I have been jumping between comps with different pixel aspect ratios and now it seems I have done something that is making all my work compressed. I cannot simply stretch them because that throws the box proportions out of wack. It is happening with presets and default settings.

I have restarted AE. Restarted my computer. Problem persists. Is there a preferences file that has become corrupted that I can delete?

Hi Lisa- 
(edited) Everything MonkeyBars creates is square pixels, so I guess it could look compressed in a non-square pixel comp.

We do pop up a non-square pixel warning if you're comp isn’t square pixels. Are you getting that and proceeding anyway?

 I'm not exactly sure what's going on with your project - can you open a support ticket and send us a copy. We'll check it out.

Ryan Vaznis

Orrin Zucker said:

Ryan Vaznis said:

Hey, this seems like it'll be super useful. Any thoughts on adding an easy way to add a texture to the solid?

Are there any breaks on bulk pricing? Like, what if I need 10 licenses?

Hey Ryan- 

Yeah- check out the FAQs. Theres a pre-comp option for the boxes, then you just open the pre-comp and drop the texture in there.

As far as bulk pricing, there will be after the sale...but it won't be as good as the intro special (20% is standard), so I think now would be the best deal.

Let me know if I could be of anymore help...and thanks for the support!

-oz

Ha, ok, I'll check that out.

I picked up 2 licenses to test out to see how it will work for our group. The only issue I'm having now is that the animation movement has no difference between 'inertia' and 'anticipate'. It did last night before I put in my serial # so I'm not sure how to fix it.

As an aside, are you going to put in any other options to adjust the speed of things?

Orrin Zucker

The only issue I'm having now is that the animation movement has no difference between 'inertia' and 'anticipate'. It did last night before I put in my serial # so I'm not sure how to fix it.

As an aside, are you going to put in any other options to adjust the speed of things?

Both those settings are similar in that they're based on several factors - amount of distance its traveling (up/down vs left/right) Ease Type and the speed...so they can appear differently in different animations. 

Anticipate really only makes sense as an In Ease Type with an Out Transition. 

As far as different speeds, I've time-stretched the final comp layer and that seem to work well, but that said- this is version 1 and we're always open to suggestions...(make one ;-)

 

Cam Suttie

Whole lines of text are disappearing randomly before the animation is finishing - Is there a way to fix this?

Orrin Zucker

Cam Suttie said:

Whole lines of text are disappearing randomly before the animation is finishing - Is there a way to fix this?

Hey Cam-

Without seeing it,l, it sounds like you have Transition: On & Off selected and the animation doesn't have time to complete before the out is triggered.

Try increasing the length of the comp and rebuilding,...or if you're using medium or slow speed, try fast. You can also mess with a shorter delay.

Let me know if that's not the answer... Open up a support ticket and send over the project. I'll check it out.

-oz

Fit Chicago

Is there a way to resize the UI Panel?  

I cannot see all of the selections in MonkeyBars and cannot scroll down.  

Here is a screenshot of what I see when I open the MonkeyBars interface: http://imgur.com/IC9HDVt

Thanks, in advance, for your help!

Orrin Zucker

Fit Chicago said:

Is there a way to resize the UI Panel?  

I cannot see all of the selections in MonkeyBars and cannot scroll down.  

Here is a screenshot of what I see when I open the MonkeyBars interface: http://imgur.com/IC9HDVt

Thanks, in advance, for your help!

Hi- you cant resize a script, but you can doc it, and that should save a bit of room. It that doesn't work, try changing the resolution of your screen....it should fit pretty easily.

Fit Chicago

Orrin Zucker said:

Fit Chicago said:

Is there a way to resize the UI Panel?  

I cannot see all of the selections in MonkeyBars and cannot scroll down.  

Here is a screenshot of what I see when I open the MonkeyBars interface: http://imgur.com/IC9HDVt

Thanks, in advance, for your help!

Hi- you cant resize a script, but you can doc it, and that should save a bit of room. It that doesn't work, try changing the resolution of your screen....it should fit pretty easily.

Thanks Orrin!!  Appreciate the help!

Orrin Zucker

Let us know how it goes- if u can't get it to work we'll adjust the ui...

Orrin Zucker

Fit Chicago said:

Is there a way to resize the UI Panel?  

I cannot see all of the selections in MonkeyBars and cannot scroll down.  

We just tweaked the layout and uploaded a never version 1.01...check it out and let us know if its ok.

Gary Ellison

Hi Orrin.  I would like my normal text to be in say, book, and for the alt text to be in bold.

Is there an easy way of doing this?

Thank you once again!

Orrin Zucker

Gary Ellison said:

Hi Orrin.  I would like my normal text to be in say, book, and for the alt text to be in bold.

Is there an easy way of doing this?

Thank you once again!

Hey Gary- Sorry- we can't do multiple fonts or weights  (we tried, didn't seem possible), but you can open the sub-comp, click Unshy Text in Monkey Tools and do it manually. 

-oz

Mark Warner

Hi Orrin - lovely stuff, as always!

If I rename my "master" comp then it breaks the animations as the comp name is contained within the scripts. Can you recommend any tools that can update the scripts to a new comp name?

Mark

Orrin Zucker

If I rename my "master" comp then it breaks the animations as the comp name is contained within the scripts. Can you recommend any tools that can update the scripts to a new comp name?

Mark

Hey Mark- 

Actually- we addressed it in the FAQs.- check it out.

-oz

Rob McDougall

I spend quite a lot of time making animated text boxes that unhide on some jobs. This tool is extremely appealing. One thing missing, for me at least, is the ability to stagger animations negatively - i.e. start bringing in the second line of text whilst the first is still animating. I find this to be much more pleasing to the eye across multi-line text boxes, rather than waiting for one line to completely animate in, then start on the next… would you consider adding this?

Cheers!

Orrin Zucker

Rob McDougall said:

I spend quite a lot of time making animated text boxes that unhide on some jobs. This tool is extremely appealing. One thing missing, for me at least, is the ability to stagger animations negatively - i.e. start bringing in the second line of text whilst the first is still animating. I find this to be much more pleasing to the eye across multi-line text boxes, rather than waiting for one line to completely animate in, then start on the next… would you consider adding this?

Cheers!

Hey Rob- we do have a delay option- the way it works is that (for short) the line gets triggered half way thru it's box animation, and the next box gets triggered half way thru the previous line animation- and so on...there's a few delay options to play with.

It sounds like you'd like one somewhere inbetween none and short...

Certainly possible, we'll wait a bit to see if we can gather any more requests and then do one big update.

Great feedback- thanks!

Orrin Zucker

 would you consider adding this?

Cheers!

We just did! Check out the lastest version!

Peter Lyall

Hi, 

Does titles and thirds well (which will likely make it totally worth the money for some and for me in the long run) but anything else involves too much customizing particularly when your projects require other content like call-outs/ lists etc that you want in the same title style. I realize you can (and I did) edit the shyed layers to achieve the look you want but that severely hampers any time savings.

I see these as my issues though as I could easily have used the try button rather than add to cart.

So why am I commenting you might ask? Well, I wanted to put forward two ideas that would increase its usefulness, at least for me...

• single box for multiple line text (to separate multi-line items in a list in a tidier fashion). While I could do two versions with and without box and unshy and edit a box layer it creates work where I could have just created the effect myself. I guess this would have to work off of text leading so no idea if it is feasible?
  
  
• different text weight for alt text (I understand this isn't possible from comments below). I thought maybe a faux bold but that doesn't seem accessible from scripting (Adobe really do seem to go out of their way to limit functionality) and an animation preset based off tracking and stroke probably isn't practical. But still, would be cool.

Would also love to be able to set the animation for each line somehow.

Anyway, I think this is a great idea but as it stands, for me, I just don't see a lot of use in future projects.

Cheers

Edited for coherence (or lack there of)

Orrin Zucker

Peter Lyall said:

Hi, 

Does titles and thirds well (which will likely make it totally worth the money for some and for me in the long run) but anything else involves too much customizing particularly when your projects require other content like call-outs/ lists etc that you want in the same title style. I realize you can (and I did) edit the shyed layers to achieve the look you want but that severely hampers any time savings.

I see these as my issues though as I could easily have used the try button rather than add to cart.

So why am I commenting you might ask? Well, I wanted to put forward two ideas that would increase its usefulness, at least for me...

• single box for multiple line text (to separate multi-line items in a list in a tidier fashion). While I could do two versions with and without box and unshy and edit a box layer it creates work where I could have just created the effect myself. I guess this would have to work off of text leading so no idea if it is feasible?
  
  
• different text weight for alt text (I understand this isn't possible from comments below). I thought maybe a faux bold but that doesn't seem accessible from scripting (Adobe really do seem to go out of their way to limit functionality) and an animation preset based off tracking and stroke probably isn't practical. But still, would be cool.

Would also love to be able to set the animation for each line somehow.

Anyway, I think this is a great idea but as it stands, for me, I just don't see a lot of use in future projects.

Cheers

Edited for coherence (or lack there of)

Hey Peter- Thanks for the feedback. 

I understand we're you're coming from...and with any plug-in or script sometimes they're going to be good for your project, other times not.  

In the case of MonkeyBars, you might find a project where you just use it for text animation and create the bars yourself, or the opposite. Or just use it as a simple text animator without bars altogether...

What I've found in my work is that you never know what the future holds - and the more tools you have at your disposal (especially ones you own and don't pay a subscription fee), the more options you have to pull from. 

Please keep the suggestions coming- we try to find ways of making them happen. Certainly the single box and multiple weights we'd love to have incorporated if it were possible.

-oz

Peter Lyall

Orrin Zucker said:

Hey Peter- Thanks for the feedback. 

I understand we're you're coming from...and with any plug-in or script sometimes they're going to be good for your project, other times not.  

In the case of MonkeyBars, you might find a project where you just use it for text animation and create the bars yourself, or the opposite. Or just use it as a simple text animator without bars altogether...

What I've found in my work is that you never know what the future holds - and the more tools you have at your disposal (especially ones you own and don't pay a subscription fee), the more options you have to pull from. 

Please keep the suggestions coming- we try to find ways of making them happen. Certainly the single box and multiple weights we'd love to have incorporated if it were possible.

-oz

True enough. Additional suggestion, might not be possible (I'm no programmer) or might be redundant based on working preferences but would be great if MonkeyBars comp was created above the currently selected layer and at the current scrub position.

Orrin Zucker

True enough. Additional suggestion, might not be possible (I'm no programmer) or might be redundant based on working preferences but would be great if MonkeyBars comp was created above the currently selected layer and at the current scrub position.

Both of those seem doable and we think very good ideas. We'll play with it and if everything works out include them in the next update!

Gary Ellison

I'm sure this isn't needed, but I just want to say that after using this for a few weeks it's been an absolute lifesaver!  It's sped up my workflow so much, and for the price it's an absolute steal.

Thank you so much for this awesome script!

Orrin Zucker

Gary Ellison said:

I'm sure this isn't needed, but I just want to say that after using this for a few weeks it's been an absolute lifesaver!  It's sped up my workflow so much, and for the price it's an absolute steal.

Thank you so much for this awesome script!

Thanks Gary!!

Stanko Stupar

This tool is awesome and a life saver!!! The only big issue is lack of control for the timing and delay. Would be great if you could just type number of frames for animation and delay. Also you could put little box (like in the flow plugin) where you can manipulate your  bezier. Maybe I am asking too much:) but with these updates I am sure you'll hit the spot!!!!

Cheers

Andrew Saunders

This tool is great.  One suggested addition for the layout section, could you get checkbox that toggles aligning the position of Lowers and Uppers between Title and Action safe?

Orrin Zucker

Andrew Saunders said:

This tool is great.  One suggested addition for the layout section, could you get checkbox that toggles aligning the position of Lowers and Uppers between Title and Action safe?

Great- we're compiling a list of suggestions - thanks!

Marcin Staszewski

Awesome stuff, really! I've been trying to create the same kind of preset (unfortunately I lack knowledge to write scripts), and actually I succeeded - but it was made of comps within comps, and workflow was very slow. Your solution is the best!

May I have two suggestions tough:

1. Please make it so it does not reset to default setting each time AE is opened (or is this Trial Verision only issue?) and just use the last setup. It is much more comfotable when working on the same project for a few days.

2. Check if you can ignore language-specific letters (like ążźćęń etc.) when it comes to borders - right now it adds expansion margin to the accent sign, not the actual letter. For example: "Ń" - in my opinion it shoud act like this is regular capital N and do not consider any extra dashes. Is that possible?

Thanks anyway, this is a great tool and I already know I will buy it as soon as I have a chance

Orrin Zucker

Marcin Staszewski said:

Awesome stuff, really! I've been trying to create the same kind of preset (unfortunately I lack knowledge to write scripts), and actually I succeeded - but it was made of comps within comps, and workflow was very slow. Your solution is the best!

May I have two suggestions tough:

1. Please make it so it does not reset to default setting each time AE is opened (or is this Trial Verision only issue?) and just use the last setup. It is much more comfotable when working on the same project for a few days.

2. Check if you can ignore language-specific letters (like ążźćęń etc.) when it comes to borders - right now it adds expansion margin to the accent sign, not the actual letter. For example: "Ń" - in my opinion it shoud act like this is regular capital N and do not consider any extra dashes. Is that possible?

Thanks anyway, this is a great tool and I already know I will buy it as soon as I have a chance

Hey Marcin- Thanks for the note. Unfortunately scripts don't allow for opening in any state other than their default. I'd much prefer your solution if it were possible. I assume you tried saving and loading?

I'll look into the other request, but I have a feeling that its just the way AE handles those types of letterforms. Do you know if AE text does what you want it to do when you're not using it with our scripts?

Dan Klein

Why does my monkey bars look like this?
It has no place to add text.

Orrin Zucker

Dan Klein said:

Why does my monkey bars look like this?
It has no place to add text.

Hey Dan-- I think you're looking at MonkeyTools- which are little helper scripts. Monkeybars is a whole other script.

Rachelle Purych

Hey,

Is there a way to input a specific Hex code for color rather than the toggle system? My team's colors are very specific and I can't eyeball that well. Thanks!

Orrin Zucker

Rachelle Purych said:

Hey,

Is there a way to input a specific Hex code for color rather than the toggle system? My team's colors are very specific and I can't eyeball that well. Thanks!

Hi Rachelle- unfortunately, no. But you could use the eyedrop tool on the color wheel.

Or click pre-comp box fill on the ui and drop a solid with the color in there.

Hope that helps!

Oz

Lukas Kropf

Hi There, is there a way to make the edges of the boxes round or a bit rounded off, so there aren't these sharp edges ?