aescripts + aeplugins

Miika Turunen

Cool tool! Would it be possible to get the grid controls to the "Effect Controls" so it would be faster to access those? That would kinda great! Anycase once again a tool I didnt know I needed before I saw it

mamoworld Möhl

Thank you for the feedback, Miika!
What do you mean with "grid controls"? The grid parameters will show up in the Effect controls:

Miika Turunen

Mathias Möhl said:

Thank you for the feedback, Miika!
What do you mean with "grid controls"? The grid parameters will show up in the Effect controls:

My mistake Mathias I just watched the videos and in the videos you only see those controls being used & talked about in the layer dropdown so I got confused! But great! It's better than I thought knowing this

Miika Turunen

I'm gonan get this... but already waiting for GridGuide 3D

Koen Rollé

I just bought Gridguide (excellent tool by the way!) but I encountered a problem. I created a isometric grid using 2 infinite grids (horizontal & vertical), rotating the vertical grid 60° and the horizontal one at 30°. Worked like a charm. But when I tried to convert them to Guides, I was not getting the result I expected. I only got Guides at the edges of my comp.
Any advice?

 

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Koen,
since Ae only supports horizontal and vertical guides, all grid lines that are not horizontal or vertical are ignored when converting grids to guides. By default (you can disable this in the GridGuide settings) GridGuide also aligns to the edges of the comp, hence it also creates guides for those when converting grids to guides.

Maybe I should think about a meaningful error/warning message that makes this more clean in cases where you try to convert grids to guides and have rotated grids.

In general, if you need rotated grids, your only option is to use GridGuide's alignment toolbar, unless Adobe extends their support for native guide lines to rotated lines.

Cheers,
Mathias

Olivier Cefai

Hi Mathias,

I'm wondering if there is a way to "lock" the resizing of some layers when building an auto layout. Say you've got 6 layers to work with but you want to ensure than one of them do not get resized in the process (and thus have others resize accordingly). Is that possible?

Thanks,

Olivier

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Olivier,

no, currently the Auto Layout tries to minimize the overall size change but cannot add priorities for individual layers. This is an interesting feature request. I will think about whether there is an easy way to extend it that way.

Cheers,
Mathias

Olivier Cefai said:

Hi Mathias,

I'm wondering if there is a way to "lock" the resizing of some layers when building an auto layout. Say you've got 6 layers to work with but you want to ensure than one of them do not get resized in the process (and thus have others resize accordingly). Is that possible?

Thanks,

Olivier

Jesse Gammage

Will Grid Guide recognize and align 3D Layers and Text?

Thanks,
Jesse

mamoworld Möhl

GridGuide can align the bounding boxes of text layers (but not the baseline).
It cannot deal with 3D layers.

Jesse Gammage said: Will Grid Guide recognize and align 3D Layers and Text?

Thanks,
Jesse

Haitian Yan

Can it allign a single node point on a mask or a shape path?

mamoworld Möhl

Haitian Yan said:

Can it allign a single node point on a mask or a shape path?

The build-in align to grid feature can align layer bounding boxes and anchor points, but no mask or shape points. But when you create guide lines using the "Convert Grids to Guides" feature, you can use the shape point snapping of AE guides: When moving shapes or invividual shape points, it will snap the point you clicked on to the guides (but only the one you clicked on, even if you have several points selected).

AUSTIN HILL

When I click the convert to guides button it does some really weird stuff.  It creates all these other precomps from other projects in the project panel and generally just doesn't work.  I'm on CC 2017. 

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Austin,
could you please open a support ticket here and explain the behavior in more detail?
https://aescripts.com/contact/

Actually, I've never heard anybody reporting such a behavior and I have no good idea what you mean with "these other precomps from other projects". Maybe you can attach your project or at least some screenshots to the support ticket? The more details I know the better and quicker I will be able to help.

Cheers,
Mathias

AUSTIN HILL said:

When I click the convert to guides button it does some really weird stuff.  It creates all these other precomps from other projects in the project panel and generally just doesn't work.  I'm on CC 2017. 

AUSTIN HILL

Hi Mathica, 

I don't really see a way to respond directly to your response regarding my issue and I haven't opened a ticket because for the life of me I can't replicate what the plugin was doing last night...which makes me think it was either user error OR something to do with re-booting my computer.  I followed along precisely to your isometric tutorial and everything is working fine...so I don't really know what was happening previously.  If indeed it wasn't my fault I will do my best to document the behaviour again and open a ticket.  Thanks for the quick reply and the plugin is very cool!

thanks!

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Austin,
ok, good to hear that the issue is solved and thank you for clarifying this :-)

AUSTIN HILL said:

Hi Mathica, 

I don't really see a way to respond directly to your response regarding my issue and I haven't opened a ticket because for the life of me I can't replicate what the plugin was doing last night...which makes me think it was either user error OR something to do with re-booting my computer.  I followed along precisely to your isometric tutorial and everything is working fine...so I don't really know what was happening previously.  If indeed it wasn't my fault I will do my best to document the behaviour again and open a ticket.  Thanks for the quick reply and the plugin is very cool!

thanks!

Ryan Pohanic

One of the most useful scripts I've ever used--thanks so much for creating this!!!

mamoworld Möhl

Thank you for the kind words, Ryan!

Ryan Pohanic said:

One of the most useful scripts I've ever used--thanks so much for creating this!!!

Chris Marriott

This is great. A great feature would be if you could save a couple of your most used presents. Sometimes you work with the same company that needs the space white spacing or margins, or layouts. Ideal if you are on a project then a single click creates it to standard/specification.

If there was a couple of buttons on the UI like Preset 1/ Preset 2/ Preset 3 for example. Maybe these could even change the names in a settings menu or by another means. Then Once you have a Grid Guide setup have the option to store it as a pre-set.

Just a thought! Great tools! Thanks! 

Chris Marriott

A couple of follow up ideas also would be a few stock pre-sets for say 720p, 1080P, 2k, 4k that automatically has a uniform even grid setup to save time position and adjusting the default. Just another thought.

mamoworld Möhl

Thank you for these ideas, Chris!

I have just put it on my list of feature requests and will consider it for the next update. However, I am currently focused on other projects (BeatEdit for After Effects and some other exciting new tools) so I definitely won't look into a GridGuide update during the next few month. Also, this is always a balance between adding more features and not cluttering the user interface with too much functionality.

Chris Marriott said:

This is great. A great feature would be if you could save a couple of your most used presents. Sometimes you work with the same company that needs the space white spacing or margins, or layouts. Ideal if you are on a project then a single click creates it to standard/specification.

If there was a couple of buttons on the UI like Preset 1/ Preset 2/ Preset 3 for example. Maybe these could even change the names in a settings menu or by another means. Then Once you have a Grid Guide setup have the option to store it as a pre-set.

Just a thought! Great tools! Thanks! 

Chris Marriott

mamoworld Möhl said:

Thank you for these ideas, Chris!

I have just put it on my list of feature requests and will consider it for the next update. However, I am currently focused on other projects (BeatEdit for After Effects and some other exciting new tools) so I definitely won't look into a GridGuide update during the next few month. Also, this is always a balance between adding more features and not cluttering the user interface with too much functionality.

Chris Marriott said:

This is great. A great feature would be if you could save a couple of your most used presents. Sometimes you work with the same company that needs the space white spacing or margins, or layouts. Ideal if you are on a project then a single click creates it to standard/specification.

If there was a couple of buttons on the UI like Preset 1/ Preset 2/ Preset 3 for example. Maybe these could even change the names in a settings menu or by another means. Then Once you have a Grid Guide setup have the option to store it as a pre-set.

Just a thought! Great tools! Thanks! 

Sounds great And glad to hear other projects are well underway!

Totally understand the non cluttering of the UI. I'm a big fan of minimal UI's as I have an enormous After Effects workspace utterly rammed full of scripts. All the scripts take up over a 2k monitor already so I have them all to hand and memory jogger for ideas at a moments notice.

Chris Marriott

Hi Mathias,

Just in case anyone else is missing a Preset option and having to type in multiple types of guides on each project. As there isn't a preset menu in the script if you create the Guide, instead save your guides as effect pre-sets.

So what I have done is create a folder in my effects & Presets panel with different guides for different projects. 

The way to Apply your pre-sets without breaking the Guide controls is -

1 - Create a new Grid Guide

2 - Apply your Preset to the effects stack of the guide layer. Do not delete the Existing Effect first - this breaks the script links.

3 - Once you have stacked your pre-set just remove the default generated one and the guide will update using your settings.

Sorted No if I can just think of a way to make a Kbar/Ft-Toolbar automation to do this in a single step

Do you have a thought Mathias to just get this little preset route to be a little quicker? it's not too bad bad but would avoid the need to make extra UI clutter so this might be a little quick idea to add to an FAQ for creating multiple Guide styles.

Cheers

Chris

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Chris,

that's a great tip - thank you so much for sharing!

The current GridGuide cannot be used from other scripts (although I might add that similar to how I did it with MochaImport+, TextExploder and Pins & Boxes, see https://mamoworld.com/article/kbar-and-scripting-apis )

But applying presets, deleting effects etc. can all be done with scripts so you could have a two step process, where you manually execute your step 1 and then have a KBar button that performs your steps 2 and 3.

I've put a note about your comment on my list of tutorial ideas. So hopefully eventually I find some time to test this and make a tutorial about it :-)

Cheers

Mathias

Chris Marriott said:

Hi Mathias,

Just in case anyone else is missing a Preset option and having to type in multiple types of guides on each project. As there isn't a preset menu in the script if you create the Guide, instead save your guides as effect pre-sets.

So what I have done is create a folder in my effects & Presets panel with different guides for different projects. 

The way to Apply your pre-sets without breaking the Guide controls is -

1 - Create a new Grid Guide

2 - Apply your Preset to the effects stack of the guide layer. Do not delete the Existing Effect first - this breaks the script links.

3 - Once you have stacked your pre-set just remove the default generated one and the guide will update using your settings.

Sorted No if I can just think of a way to make a Kbar/Ft-Toolbar automation to do this in a single step

Do you have a thought Mathias to just get this little preset route to be a little quicker? it's not too bad bad but would avoid the need to make extra UI clutter so this might be a little quick idea to add to an FAQ for creating multiple Guide styles.

Cheers

Chris

Chris Marriott

Sounds great Mathias! 

So I'm guessing also for say Ft Toolbar. You could create a script that Applied a Pre-set and removed the old one and run it via javascript to carry it all out via a button?

I'm not proficient in scripting Would be great to know how to create the code for this. Is it pretty simple?

In pseudo/step code i'd imagine -

For Selected Layer.comp

ApplyPresets.(Preset name entered here)

Remove First Effect of SelectedLayer of the effects stack.

End

Soemthing like that for sequence? If you think its super simple to do a quick script it would be incredible if you could show me!

Thanks for providing some amazing tools. I have a good few of yours and planning to buy more soon  

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Chris,

yes, such a script could be run from KBar, Ft Toolbar or The Commander, for example.

It is not super simple. Here is some snippet, for example, that gets you started with applying a preset to a layer:

https://github.com/fabianmoronzirfas/after-effects-script-snippets/blob/master/apply-preset-to-existing-layer.jsx

Again, I hope to find the time to look into this, but cannot promise anything (busy...).

Harlem Harl

Hi Mathias,

How ya doin ?

Dunno if u remember me, i'm a french user from the Motion Café team.

Can u tell me why i have this message when i try to clear and change the grid please ?

"La fonction eu.guides.removeGuide n'est pas définie"


I can no longer create another grid after I get this message.

I have to erase the guides with the AE menu or to close the project so that it works again



I thought it was possible to make it in relation to this message : "clear existing guides before creating new ones?"


Keep it up with ur great products


Regards,



Harlem

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Harlem,

this sounds like a bug - I look into it now!

Cheers,

Mathias

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Harlem,

I just published a new version 1.1.002 which fixes the issue. It turned out that this was working well in 1.1.000 but in 1.1.001 I accidentally changed a line without noticing it and it caused this bug. Thanks a lot for pointing me to the issue!

Cheers,

Mathias

Harlem Harl

Great !

Action Reaction !!!

Thank u Math

Honer Zawita

Hi, Could I render the gridguide ?

Chris Marriott

Honer Zawita said:

Hi, Could I render the gridguide ?

Just select the Guide layer, then going to "Layer/Guide Layer" from the menu and then it would render in the video export.

mamoworld Möhl

Yes, thank you very much for explaining it, Chris!

Some more details:

By default, GridGuide's shape layers are guide layers, which means they are not rendered, but you can disable the guide layer switch to render them.

For an explanation of guide layers see here

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/layer-properties.html#guide_layers

Chris Marriott said:

Honer Zawita said:

Hi, Could I render the gridguide ?

Just select the Guide layer, then going to "Layer/Guide Layer" from the menu and then it would render in the video export.

Chris Marriott

A little request to add to this tool

The current "align left or right", or "align top or bottom" buttons for which ever is closer. i kind of feel that they would be handy as aligning to the middle of the current guide lines. 

For example if you are aligning some text you could align one to the upper line, then one to the middle of the guide box, then another to the next line.

So align between the lines centre would be amazing based on anchor point. Unsure how possible this is. But would be useful!

Thanks for an epic tool.

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Chris,

thank you, I've just put a note about that on my list of feature requests! It's already the second useful entry on that list that comes from you :-)

It definitely sounds feasible. As a workaround what you can already do now is creating a grid with twice as many lines (or offset the grid by half a cell size). Then you have lines where cell centers have been before and can snap the anchor point to those.

Chris Marriott said:

A little request to add to this tool

The current "align left or right", or "align top or bottom" buttons for which ever is closer. i kind of feel that they would be handy as aligning to the middle of the current guide lines. 

For example if you are aligning some text you could align one to the upper line, then one to the middle of the guide box, then another to the next line.

So align between the lines centre would be amazing based on anchor point. Unsure how possible this is. But would be useful!

Thanks for an epic tool.

Chris Marriott

Ah amazing I have two in the list haha!

Another idea that would be super handy (I've made to make a work around for this) would be Safe Zones. For a company we had to devise a specific Grid Guide for Safe White spacing around the border.

If this was integrated an option when making the guide in projects it would just save more steps especially if it could be easily adjusted.

So like Safe Zone, Opacity (so you could see the guides through it) and a Border Colour to specify. 

So the save zone could be set by X cells from the edge so in my example it would be 1 Cell. 

Hopefully this Image link works - https://www.screencast.com/t/qkyS7Z1sa

mamoworld Möhl

That's an interesting suggestion, too! However, it sounds much more niche than the other ones. I will add it to my list anyway :-)

Chris Marriott said:

Ah amazing I have two in the list haha!

Another idea that would be super handy (I've made to make a work around for this) would be Safe Zones. For a company we had to devise a specific Grid Guide for Safe White spacing around the border.

If this was integrated an option when making the guide in projects it would just save more steps especially if it could be easily adjusted.

So like Safe Zone, Opacity (so you could see the guides through it) and a Border Colour to specify. 

So the save zone could be set by X cells from the edge so in my example it would be 1 Cell. 

Hopefully this Image link works - https://www.screencast.com/t/qkyS7Z1sa

David Oulashian

This is a really interesting tool. Purchased it for a big Text project. Problem I'm having is that it doesn't support aligning baseline to grids (for lower case text). Each word is a separate layer - same font size - but I can't figure a way to use the Auto Grid and Snap without it rescaling and and misaligning layers of text that are different size layers but the same font size and baseline. Any suggestions?

mamoworld Möhl

Hi David,

the anchor point of a text is usually located at the base line. So does it help to switch the "Align to Grid" mode to "Anchor Point" instead of "Object" and then snap the anchor to the grid?

Cheers,

Mathias

David Oulashian said:

This is a really interesting tool. Purchased it for a big Text project. Problem I'm having is that it doesn't support aligning baseline to grids (for lower case text). Each word is a separate layer - same font size - but I can't figure a way to use the Auto Grid and Snap without it rescaling and and misaligning layers of text that are different size layers but the same font size and baseline. Any suggestions?

David Oulashian

Unfortunately no - it gets fouled up with any characters that have descenders on them.  "cy" or "tj" combinations end up with the "y" or "j" descender lifting up the whole word - I think the anchor point defaults to the bottom of the character not the baseline...

An interesting idea would be to add checkboxes to the autogrid function to enable different options. Ie character resize or not, point size multiple (I don't know what you call this but put in one size (50 pt) and everything else grows in multiples of that), maybe a checkbox to define all line spacing to a multiple of that... 

Just some thoughts...

mamoworld Möhl

That's strange. I just did a quick test and the anchor point defaults to the baseline also with combinations like cy for me:

These are interesting suggestions, David!

David Oulashian said:

Unfortunately no - it gets fouled up with any characters that have descenders on them.  "cy" or "tj" combinations end up with the "y" or "j" descender lifting up the whole word - I think the anchor point defaults to the bottom of the character not the baseline...

An interesting idea would be to add checkboxes to the autogrid function to enable different options. Ie character resize or not, point size multiple (I don't know what you call this but put in one size (50 pt) and everything else grows in multiples of that), maybe a checkbox to define all line spacing to a multiple of that... 

Just some thoughts...

David Oulashian

Hmm, let me check into it again?!? Maybe it was user error - not the first time...

David Oulashian

You are right about the anchor point. Thanks for clarifying.

Here is an example of the issue I am having:

(sorry I can't figure out how to insert a picture)_

 Type "are young ugly and stupid" each word as a separate text layer same font sizes. Line the text up like a sentence but with some slight variation in Y position.

When I hit coarser grid or finer grid it either mis-aligns them so they are not on the same Y position or puts them on the same Y but then changes the scale of each one...

mamoworld Möhl

Hi David,

oh, now I understand. Yes, the manual alignment can use anchor points but the "Auto Grid & Snap" in deed only looks at the outlines of the texts.

I will put a note on my list of feature requests that the Auto Grid & Snap could also consider the anchor point somehow (maybe only for text layers) to estimate a baseline. So at the moment in this case you can only fix the misplaced layers after running the auto feature (using the manual snapping features). But I will think about what I can do in future updates.

By the way: for inserting images you need to use the "Attach a file" feature.

Cheers

David Oulashian said:

You are right about the anchor point. Thanks for clarifying.

Here is an example of the issue I am having:

(sorry I can't figure out how to insert a picture)_

 Type "are young ugly and stupid" each word as a separate text layer same font sizes. Line the text up like a sentence but with some slight variation in Y position.

When I hit coarser grid or finer grid it either mis-aligns them so they are not on the same Y position or puts them on the same Y but then changes the scale of each one...

David Oulashian

Thanks man, I appreciate your comments. By the way, I don't see any "attach a file" feature. I see "insert an image" but that just asks for a url... am I blind to the obvious?

mamoworld Möhl

for me, it looks like this

once you uploaded the image file you see a preview of it and when you hover over the preview, commands to insert the image in the message are shown.

David Oulashian said:

Thanks man, I appreciate your comments. By the way, I don't see any "attach a file" feature. I see "insert an image" but that just asks for a url... am I blind to the obvious?

David Oulashian

I don't have either of those options (attach file, Back to Discussions)...

I show you a screen shot but.... 

Lloyd Alvarez

David Oulashian said:

I don't have either of those options (attach file, Back to Discussions)...

I show you a screen shot but.... 

Reset your browser cookies/cache or use a different browser or an incognito window and make sure you are using a desktop. But better yet, please open a support ticket for assistance https://aescripts.com/contact/?direct=1

Patricia Pilz

Hi. Do you have an estimate when GridGuide will be updated to work on AE 2022, please? Many thanks.

mamoworld Möhl

Hi Patricia,

GridGuide is compatible with Ae 2022. I just updated the compatibility information :-)

Patricia Pilz said:

Hi. Do you have an estimate when GridGuide will be updated to work on AE 2022, please? Many thanks.