Hi Jeremy, for what I've seen this is an amazing add-on, great job!! Something that I would LOVE to see in the future is a way to import After Effects compositions as image textures in Blender, I know that's very different to what this add-on does, but I think if someone can figure out how to build something like that it would be you!
Thanks for the idea, I'll add a note about the request. Would you mind clarifying... do you mean something like an automatic render of the comp then import as a material/texture? (That particular workflow is very unique to each 3D project so may not be a priority for the addon at this point in time.)
I think what he's getting at is a reversal. So if you're building say an app walkthrough or something in Ae, you could send that to Blender as a texture.
Hi Jeremy, for what I've seen this is an amazing add-on, great job!! Something that I would LOVE to see in the future is a way to import After Effects compositions as image textures in Blender, I know that's very different to what this add-on does, but I think if someone can figure out how to build something like that it would be you!
Thanks for the idea, I'll add a note about the request. Would you mind clarifying... do you mean something like an automatic render of the comp then import as a material/texture? (That particular workflow is very unique to each 3D project so may not be a priority for the addon at this point in time.)
I think what he's getting at is a reversal. So if you're building say an app walkthrough or something in Ae, you could send that to Blender as a texture.
Hi Duane, thanks... so essentially are you imagining this would be something like:
Render the current comp in After Effects (or selected layers).
Import the rendered file into Blender and apply as a texture to object or face?
Unfortunately, it doesn't support importing camera rotation in X, Y, Z into Blender (Zoom + Orientation Animations).
Just a simple moving camera? Or am I doing something wrong?
Tell me, please, do you plan to import more complex camera properties from After Effects into Blender in the future?
Then I can buy it.
Thanks
Hi Alex, currently orientation and zoom is supported but not separate x,y,z rotations (yet). I am working on supporting more features and have been working on implementing this for the next release. Thanks for the feedback.
Hey Marius, thanks for reaching out and the great video to show the issues! Yes something is not working right here, the transforms are usually transferred correctly (to pixel accuracy) so it looks like some kind of bug with either the file or system. Would you mind opening a support ticket so I get discuss the details with you personally and work out a solution. Ideally I'd love to grab a copy of the blend file (minus anything private of course) to test on my own system.
Hi Daniel! I felt I simply had to leave a comment. I've just avoided dropping $250 on Newton 3 for a gig I was working on, thanks to BlenderAe. I needed a brief 2D physics simulation embedded in some other action, and after racking my brain to come up with a solution that didn't involve spending that much money for a single project or animating it all by hand, it clicked - I could use Blender's rigid body simulation and export that to AE with your addon. It worked like. a. charm. It wasn't particularly more cumbersome to do it that way than it was to use a trial version of Newton for this particular use case, either.
So I thank you, good sir.
By the way, may I make a feature request? I'd love to see the option to swap out the Z and Y channels on export!
Hi Daniel! I felt I simply had to leave a comment. I've just avoided dropping $250 on Newton 3 for a gig I was working on, thanks to BlenderAe. I needed a brief 2D physics simulation embedded in some other action, and after racking my brain to come up with a solution that didn't involve spending that much money for a single project or animating it all by hand, it clicked - I could use Blender's rigid body simulation and export that to AE with your addon. It worked like. a. charm. It wasn't particularly more cumbersome to do it that way than it was to use a trial version of Newton for this particular use case, either.
So I thank you, good sir.
By the way, may I make a feature request? I'd love to see the option to swap out the Z and Y channels on export!
Thanks for the comment Joel! This is one of the use-case features I'm hoping to do a tutorial about at some point!... Opens up a whole world of simulations via Blender!
Thanks for the feature request also, I'll add that to my list. Can you give me any other details on how this would help in your case?
By the way, may I make a feature request? I'd love to see the option to swap out the Z and Y channels on export!
Thanks for the comment Joel! This is one of the use-case features I'm hoping to do a tutorial about at some point!... Opens up a whole world of simulations via Blender!
Thanks for the feature request also, I'll add that to my list. Can you give me any other details on how this would help in your case?
For sure! For example, in the simulation I ran, I needed a set of objects bouncing around on the XY plane - just knocking around inside a container, like balls on a pool table. I needed to export that to a 2D scene in After Effects and parent my shape layers to the nulls, which means rotating the horizontal scene from Blender to a vertically-oriented one in AE. My workaround is just to parent all of the imported nulls to a master null, and rotate that 90 on its X axis - then everything is in the right orientation for this scene. So having an option write Blender's Y-depth axis to AE's Y-vertical axis would effectively rotate the scene during export.
I've just bought 2 licenses. The concept of BlenderAE is great. I normally use a small script ExportToAE (jsx). So, this should be a time saver. But i just can't seem to get to work properly.
Two questions. 1. When will blenderae be updated to support Blender 3.2+? As of yet it can't seem to detect After Effects. Even if i set the location directly.
2. Installed it on Blender 3.12. It detects AE now. Objects are copied over. But the camera doesn't want to be copied over. I get the following message. Unable to execute script at line 180. After Effects error: Unable to cal "setValueAtTime" because of parameter 2. Value is undefined.
I've just bought 2 licenses. The concept of BlenderAE is great. I normally use a small script ExportToAE (jsx). So, this should be a time saver. But i just can't seem to get to work properly.
Two questions. 1. When will blenderae be updated to support Blender 3.2+? As of yet it can't seem to detect After Effects. Even if i set the location directly.
2. Installed it on Blender 3.12. It detects AE now. Objects are copied over. But the camera doesn't want to be copied over. I get the following message. Unable to execute script at line 180. After Effects error: Unable to cal "setValueAtTime" because of parameter 2. Value is undefined.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Arne.
Hi Arne, thanks for the comment letting me know about these issues. I have made a lot of fixes in a new development version that I hope to release soon. Could you open a support ticket so I can communicate with you and check if the latest version helps?
Hello, I have some problems when use addon - i have blender 3.2 after effect 2022 - when exporting from blender to after - everything is fine - but when exporting the camera and layers from after effects to blender - the camera position is not correct or the layers are not copied at all - when to expect an update that will fix compatibility problems?
Hello, I have some problems when use addon - i have blender 3.2 after effect 2022 - when exporting from blender to after - everything is fine - but when exporting the camera and layers from after effects to blender - the camera position is not correct or the layers are not copied at all - when to expect an update that will fix compatibility problems?
Hi Vlad, please open a support ticket and I'll send you the latest development version to test. Thanks, Daniel.
Thanks for the feedback Mind Control. Yes, this is an issue that I cannot find a solution for at present unfortunately. There is one workaround though - if you make After Effects fullscreen by pressing CTRL + \ it will not change size when using BlenderAe.
Thanks for the feedback Mind Control. Yes, this is an issue that I cannot find a solution for at present unfortunately. There is one workaround though - if you make After Effects fullscreen by pressing CTRL + \ it will not change size when using BlenderAe.
(This is called 'Maximize App Window' in the keyboard shortcuts)
Hello, Wonderful Plugin overall, but the rotation keyframes come in
to after effects as Orientation keyframes. Which makes Motion Blur
completely Unusable. Is there a way to get the imported rotation as
actual rotation keyfames in after effects?
Thank you.
P.S: PLEASE KEEP UPDATING AND ENHANCING THIS AMAZING ADDON. The potentials and possibilities are huge!
Hello, Wonderful Plugin overall, but the rotation keyframes come in
to after effects as Orientation keyframes. Which makes Motion Blur
completely Unusable. Is there a way to get the imported rotation as
actual rotation keyfames in after effects?
Thank you.
P.S: PLEASE KEEP UPDATING AND ENHANCING THIS AMAZING ADDON. The potentials and possibilities are huge!
Hi Salim, thanks for this feedback. I'll look into this point as I have been working on rotation keyframes in the opposite direction from After Effects to Blender. I'll keep working on it. Thanks, Daniel.
is it possible, that the composition settings in After Effects AND Blender have to be 30 fps, despite that all was rendered in 25fps? I got this to work properly (export from blender to AE) only when both settings were on 30fps.
is it possible, that the composition settings in After Effects AND Blender have to be 30 fps, despite that all was rendered in 25fps? I got this to work properly (export from blender to AE) only when both settings were on 30fps.
Blender: 3.0.1
Ae: 17.7.0
Think you.
Hi Krystyna, yes at present you will need to ensure that your After Effects comp frame rate matches the Blender frame rate. If there is a mismatch a new composition will be created that matches the Blender frame rate. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any further questions.
Hello! Is there a setting where the exported objects land into the currently active AE comp instead of a new comp?
Thanks for the question. At the moment if the active comp matches the duration, resolution and framerate of the Blender scene the exported data should be imported into the active comp. If there is a mismatch in comp and Blender scene settings a new comp will be created.
Thanks for the message and attaching the file. I'll investigate this asap. Could you open a support ticket so I can message you more about this? Thanks, Daniel.
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation Blender 3.03.0\python\lib\subprocess.py", line 1420, in _execute_child
Z
180°
Mode
XYZ Euler
hp, ht, pid, tid = _winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args,
Scale X
1.000
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified
Y
1.000
location: <unknown location>:-1
Thanks for letting me know about this Graham. I'll also investigate this. Could you open a support ticket so I can message with you directly. Kind regards, Daniel.
I've discovered what's going wrong and am working out the best way to address the issue in the addon. In the meantime for your case import the camera as usual but make sure you change the 'Sensor Fit' to 'Horizontal', framerate to 30fps, resolution to 1080x1920 and ensure that your camera focal length is 56.84832000732422 (screenshot attached)
I've discovered what's going wrong and am working out the best way to address the issue in the addon. In the meantime for your case import the camera as usual but make sure you change the 'Sensor Fit' to 'Horizontal', framerate to 30fps, resolution to 1080x1920 and ensure that your camera focal length is 56.84832000732422 (screenshot attached)
Thank you for your help! But the error is still not fixed. In Frames 12 and 13, the camera is flipped. Please see photo. Picture frames 1213(sorry for the inconvenience. I don't know how to upload photos directly to this comment.)
Thank you for your help! But the error is still not fixed. In Frames 12 and 13, the camera is flipped. Please see photo. Picture frames 1213(sorry for the inconvenience. I don't know how to upload photos directly to this comment.)
Hi Thuan, I tested the scene by rendering a number of planes at different points in space in After Effects, rendering it out and importing as the camera background in Blender. The camera aligns perfectly to the After Effects scene (when the settings have been changed correctly in Blender) even though the rotation values 'switch' in the Blender scene. I believe this is mathematically impossible for me to avoid due to gimbal locking issues sorry. Here's my files that I used to check things were aligning - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HBmSnwPNyNeTnscVWZMn8UGhAsLtxcTX?usp=sharing . Please open a support ticket and I can discuss this more with you.
Thank you for your help! But the error is still not fixed. In Frames 12 and 13, the camera is flipped. Please see photo. Picture frames 1213(sorry for the inconvenience. I don't know how to upload photos directly to this comment.)
Hi Thuan, I tested the scene by rendering a number of planes at different points in space in After Effects, rendering it out and importing as the camera background in Blender. The camera aligns perfectly to the After Effects scene (when the settings have been changed correctly in Blender) even though the rotation values 'switch' in the Blender scene. I believe this is mathematically impossible for me to avoid due to gimbal locking issues sorry. Here's my files that I used to check things were aligning - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HBmSnwPNyNeTnscVWZMn8UGhAsLtxcTX?usp=sharing . Please open a support ticket and I can discuss this more with you.
Thanks for pointing out that motion blur issue Thuan. I've discovered a workaround for this case by using an expression to convert the rotation to orientation keyframes (see attached files). Please open a support ticket if you would like to discuss further details in this project. I'll look into options for solving this issue in future.
Thanks for pointing out that motion blur issue Thuan. I've discovered a workaround for this case by using an expression to convert the rotation to orientation keyframes (see attached files). Please open a support ticket if you would like to discuss further details in this project. I'll look into options for solving this issue in future.
Just purchased this amazing looking plugin/addon. When trying to connect to After Effects, Blender does not recognize After Effects.exe when trying to connect the two.
I've complicated the issue due to using the After Effects Beta, and secondly I have my adobe products installed on a non-C:\ drive location. My After Effects is currently installed on my Z:| Drive.
Would one or both of these situations be the cause of BLENDERAE not seeing my After Effects?
Do you have a timeframe for updating this to work with Blender v3.3.1 LTS?
Thanks for your work. I'm excited to try this once support has caught up to this release.
Hi Michael, I've been testing it on my system (Windows 10) with 3.3.1 and Ae v23 and it's working fine on my end. You can download the trial version to test yourself, if you do run into any problems please open a support ticket so I can investigate further. Thanks.
Just purchased this amazing looking plugin/addon. When trying to connect to After Effects, Blender does not recognize After Effects.exe when trying to connect the two.
I've complicated the issue due to using the After Effects Beta, and secondly I have my adobe products installed on a non-C:\ drive location. My After Effects is currently installed on my Z:| Drive.
Would one or both of these situations be the cause of BLENDERAE not seeing my After Effects?
Thanks!
-Bobby
Hi Bobby, thanks for letting me know. Would you mind opening a support ticket so we can discuss further. It might be the drive as I haven't tested for that situation currently. Could you try the methods mentioned in this tutorial and see if any of them work for you?
Hi, first of all great job on the plugin. I'm trying it out for work and was planning on buying it monday to work on a project. So i'm still in trial mode. First off everything worked fine, but after several times of importing the layers again, it doesn't want to go beyond 25 frames (is that a trial thing?), and sometimes it imports the keyframes, and sometimes it doesn't (from a null). Also the animation doesn't match exactly anymore, the timing is off. It feels like a cache thing or something I dont' know. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Hi, first of all great job on the plugin. I'm trying it out for work and was planning on buying it monday to work on a project. So i'm still in trial mode. First off everything worked fine, but after several times of importing the layers again, it doesn't want to go beyond 25 frames (is that a trial thing?), and sometimes it imports the keyframes, and sometimes it doesn't (from a null). Also the animation doesn't match exactly anymore, the timing is off. It feels like a cache thing or something I dont' know. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Hi, that's correct. For the trial mode it limits any animation data to 1sec, the full version allows all the data and will only import keyframes if there is animation data associated. Double check your frame rate and camera sensor fit between After Effects and Blender as these are commonly different and make the data appear off until they match correctly... but if it's still not matching for some reason please open a support ticket and I will investigate further.
VERY cool. Have t experienced any glitches. Makes it sooo much easier to get to and from Blender. Now if only there was one for Nuke. Call it BlenderNUKE.
When I round trip a file from AE to blender and back it goes back to AE at a 100th the scale. Having no issues going one way!
Thanks for the reminder about this... You can fix it by adjusting the import scale (100) and export scale (0.1) manually, see attached... I'll make a note to look into that for the next release.
I have been using this wonder addon. However, after updating to the 1.3.3 version Inside Blender, when I check the addon list, it shows as 1.3.3. But when clicking on Help & License, it pops up in After Effects as 1.3.2, and ask to download the newest 1.3.3 again. Is this a bug?
Also, can we import lights from AE to Blender? It'd be nice.
I have been using this wonder addon. However, after updating to the 1.3.3 version Inside Blender, when I check the addon list, it shows as 1.3.3. But when clicking on Help & License, it pops up in After Effects as 1.3.2, and ask to download the newest 1.3.3 again. Is this a bug?
Also, can we import lights from AE to Blender? It'd be nice.
Hey Standford EdTech! Thanks for letting me know about this. I just checked and it is indeed a bug. I'll update the addon asap. Note taken about importing lights as well. It is on my todo list so I'll try to implement that one of the next releases. Thanks!
1. When will blenderae be updated to support Blender 3.2+? As of yet it can't seem to detect After Effects. Even if i set the location directly.
Unable to execute script at line 180. After Effects error: Unable to cal "setValueAtTime" because of parameter 2. Value is undefined.
Any ideas?
Thanks for your work. I'm excited to try this once support has caught up to this release.
Thanks!
Now if only there was one for Nuke. Call it BlenderNUKE.