Any chance of an upgrade or at least a discount for those who previously bought Penpal? I got it years ago when it first released so any chance I can at least get a discount, super excited to try out this new version.
thx, I checked the date of purchase and it's April 18, 2022. I've tested the trial version of penpal2 and it's a great update. I was already using the penpal program well, but I wish they would broaden the date a bit more. I wish there was a discount for existing users, if not a completely free update. It's a great feature update and I definitely want to buy it.
Any chance of an upgrade or at least a discount for those who previously bought Penpal? I got it years ago when it first released so any chance I can at least get a discount, super excited to try out this new version.
Hey Zaki. If you bought it before six months ago, you get a third off, making it $30.
thx, I checked the date of purchase and it's April 18, 2022. I've tested the trial version of penpal2 and it's a great update. I was already using the penpal program well, but I wish they would broaden the date a bit more. I wish there was a discount for existing users, if not a completely free update. It's a great feature update and I definitely want to buy it.
ALL existing Penpal users get a third off the normal price (making it $30), which still beats the current introductory discount.
thx, I checked the date of purchase and it's April 18, 2022. I've tested the trial version of penpal2 and it's a great update. I was already using the penpal program well, but I wish they would broaden the date a bit more. I wish there was a discount for existing users, if not a completely free update. It's a great feature update and I definitely want to buy it.
ALL existing Penpal users get a third off the normal price (making it $30), which still beats the current introductory discount.
Thank you for your response. However, when I go to checkout, the $30 discount does not appear. Is there any way to get the 30% discount?
thx, I checked the date of purchase and it's April 18, 2022. I've tested the trial version of penpal2 and it's a great update. I was already using the penpal program well, but I wish they would broaden the date a bit more. I wish there was a discount for existing users, if not a completely free update. It's a great feature update and I definitely want to buy it.
ALL existing Penpal users get a third off the normal price (making it $30), which still beats the current introductory discount.
Thank you for your response. However, when I go to checkout, the $30 discount does not appear. Is there any way to get the 30% discount?
The discount pricing should simply show up without you needing to do anything. If you are logged in (to the same account that purchased v1), and you are not seeing the price as $30… I would open a support ticket.
Any chance of an upgrade or at least a discount for those who previously bought Penpal? I got it years ago when it first released so any chance I can at least get a discount, super excited to try out this new version.
nice updates, but makes no sense to punish early adopters/supporters .. kind hilarious )
Penpal’s only early adopters were the non-public beta-testers. Folks who purchased v1.0 weren’t guinea pigs. We could say that being early customers meant that they have been able to extract more value from the tool than later customers, because they have had the use of it for longer, and so this was the inherent reward for being early.
No-one who purchased Penpal v1 has to upgrade - you can just keep using v1.5. Just like some people still use Adobe CS6.
The convention here on aescripts is to give free upgrades to people who purchased within the previous one month. I think I have seen some products give a three month period. We chose to give six months. Lloyd (who runs aescripts) can confirm that this is more generous than most products on here. If you look at the upgrade pricing of After Effects tools outside of aescripts, I think you’ll find similar conventions.
Penpal 2 took months of work. It's not a point update.
any chance that the path would update itself when i do changes on the timeline without hitting the reload button? or is it a feature and im missing something? thx
any chance that the path would update itself when i do changes on the timeline without hitting the reload button? or is it a feature and im missing something? thx
Hey Daniel
It is possible to build a tool like Penpal in such a way that it is constantly 'listening' for events that happen outside of itself - mainly mouse and keyboard clicks. Some other developers use a lot of listeners like this to maintain greater synchronization between After Effects and their tools. However… the more listeners we add to our tools, the more we make your computer slow down. If you have several third party tools that are built like this, all open at once, it will negatively impact the responsiveness of After Effects' user interface.
As developers, we have to make choices about how we handle your computer's resources. Choices between being kinda 'greedy', at one extreme; and something more humble, at the other. I say humble because we don't make an assumption that our tool is the only one in your UI, or that it's more important to you than any others. We have chosen to compromise on the wow-factor of our tool, so that you are less likely to have to compromise in which tools you keep in your workspace. This decision is actually the more user-focused decision, when you bear in mind that we have thousands of users with many different workflows and expectations.
Does this allow me to export a spline to cinema 4D? Thanks
Penpal can export path data but I’m not sure what options C4D has for import. I know it can import illustrator files. What kind of import process would you like to see?
any chance that the path would update itself when i do changes on the timeline without hitting the reload button? or is it a feature and im missing something? thx
Rather than hitting Reload, you can also just double-click in an empty area of canvas.
any chance that the path would update itself when i do changes on the timeline without hitting the reload button? or is it a feature and im missing something? thx
Hey Daniel
It is possible to build a tool like Penpal in such a way that it is constantly 'listening' for events that happen outside of itself - mainly mouse and keyboard clicks. Some other developers use a lot of listeners like this to maintain greater synchronization between After Effects and their tools. However… the more listeners we add to our tools, the more we make your computer slow down. If you have several third party tools that are built like this, all open at once, it will negatively impact the responsiveness of After Effects' user interface.
As developers, we have to make choices about how we handle your computer's resources. Choices between being kinda 'greedy', at one extreme; and something more humble, at the other. I say humble because we don't make an assumption that our tool is the only one in your UI, or that it's more important to you than any others. We have chosen to compromise on the wow-factor of our tool, so that you are less likely to have to compromise in which tools you keep in your workspace. This decision is actually the more user-focused decision, when you bear in mind that we have thousands of users with many different workflows and expectations.
Amazing what you did here, love the new interface! Question, I was expecting a tool to convert vertex point from smooth to corner points. The make selected tangents smooth, opposite angels seemed a likely candidate. But that one doesn't seem to do that. Is there another command I'm overlooking?
Amazing what you did here, love the new interface! Question, I was expecting a tool to convert vertex point from smooth to corner points. The make selected tangents smooth, opposite angels seemed a likely candidate. But that one doesn't seem to do that. Is there another command I'm overlooking?
Hey Coen.
That wasn’t a special priority for us because you can already do it in AE by Option-clicking on a smooth point when you have the Pen tool (shortcut G) selected. You can select multiple smooth points and make them corner points with the same technique.
In Penpal the quickest way to do this is to go to the tangents tab, drag a marquee over the tangents you want to zero (eg both of a pair) and hit the delete key. That does the same thing as the zero tangents button.
Corner points are the same thing as points with zero tangents. Technically, all points ‘have’ tangents, it’s just that some tangents have a value of [0,0] and thus no effect on the curve of that segment.
I was trying yo do the opposite but this will do just fine
Ah I see - you can convert corner points to smooth in Penpal by holding Option / Alt and dragging out from them - same as in AE except that in Penpal you can do it to multiple selected points at the same time.
My guess is that this is user error and not a bug, but I can't get PenPal2 to load anything. I make a new project, new comp, draw a simple square shape layer, select it in the timeline and double click the PenPal panel (or open PenPal2 after drawing a shape). Either nothing happens or I get an error popup that says "Please select a Path property first". I have tried this in AE 2023, 2022, 2021 and on two different Windows 10 computers with the same result. I have watched the training video and it seems I am doing it correctly. I am using the PenPal2 trial and it says I have 8 days left on the trial. I have many other scripts and extensions installed and they all open/launch/work fine. Any ideas?
Edit: if I draw a random path with the pen tool it will load in to PenPal2, just no luck with shape layers
Mike Hoium said:
My guess is that this is user error and not a bug, but I can't get PenPal2 to load anything. I make a new project, new comp, draw a simple square shape layer, select it in the timeline and double click the PenPal panel (or open PenPal2 after drawing a shape). Either nothing happens or I get an error popup that says "Please select a Path property first". I have tried this in AE 2023, 2022, 2021 and on two different Windows 10 computers with the same result. I have watched the training video and it seems I am doing it correctly. I am using the PenPal2 trial and it says I have 8 days left on the trial. I have many other scripts and extensions installed and they all open/launch/work fine. Any ideas?
Hey Mike.
On the face of it, this sounds like you may be drawing a parametric square rather than a path-based square. Select your layer and hit G to select the Pen tool. Are you able to click and drag on the corners of the square to move them, or does the Pen tool start to draw a new path when you do that? If it's the latter, you probably had a parametric square. Penpal only works with Paths, not parametric shapes.
More info on parametric vs bezier path shapes here:
If you definitely have a path in your layer and it's not loading in Penpal, that's bad - please open a support ticket and I can troubleshoot it with you.
On the face of it, this sounds like you may be drawing a parametric square rather than a path-based square. Select your layer and hit G to select the Pen tool. Are you able to click and drag on the corners of the square to move them, or does the Pen tool start to draw a new path when you do that? If it's the latter, you probably had a parametric square. Penpal only works with Paths, not parametric shapes.
Thatr solves it, working now - thanks for the quick response
Hi, this looks like a promissing toolbox. As far as I understand, it can join paths. However, is it also possible to merge paths?
Hi Alexander. We haven’t added a merge paths function, mostly because it already exists inside After Effects, where it’s non-destructive, and we have to focus on providing things you can’t already do natively.
Is there a way to see fill? With complex shapes it might be tough to see what areas have fill.
Anycase an awesome upgrade from v1!
There isn’t. The canvas area kinda needs to stay focussed on paths themselves. If we added fills I think it would become hard to see everything.
I made my comment because it was hard to see everything . I mean imagine if you could toggle on/off fill visibility and the fill would be dotted/lined texture or something. It wouldn't need to have any color, just to show where the fill is. Because if you have complex shapes, there might be lot of paths going around and at times it would be really helpful to quickly see where the fill actually is. I noticed that I had moments where I wasn't sure which side of the path the fill was on. This would be really convenient feature. Although I understand that there might be technical issues, dev time for the feature vs. impact from feature point of view might not be enough. IMO this would be a good addition to Penpal.
It be great if you could rotate points around a certain chosen point. Like in Illustrator, when you use the rotate tool, it lets you select the origin point and then you can rotate around it. The current rotate paths feature in Penpal 2 only lets you rotate whole paths (all points), not letting you choose which points to rotate.
It be great if you could rotate points around a certain chosen point. Like in Illustrator, when you use the rotate tool, it lets you select the origin point and then you can rotate around it. The current rotate paths feature in Penpal 2 only lets you rotate whole paths (all points), not letting you choose which points to rotate.
Yep. Something like that is probably what we'd look to be doing for the next significant update.
Is there a way to zoom in more? I mean when you have bigger vector object and you would want to make detailed adjustments. The issue is that the biggest zoom is the one where the object fills the workspace but you cant go further.
Is there a way to zoom in more? I mean when you have bigger vector object and you would want to make detailed adjustments. The issue is that the biggest zoom is the one where the object fills the workspace but you cant go further.
Try mousing over Penpal and hitting the Tilde key ~
That will temporarily maximize the panel and give you a lot more detail. To add a true zoom in function, we'd have to also add a pan for obvious reasons. And that is a pretty huge task. If we get enough customers asking for it, we'll definitely consider it.
Is there a way to zoom in more? I mean when you have bigger vector object and you would want to make detailed adjustments. The issue is that the biggest zoom is the one where the object fills the workspace but you cant go further.
Try mousing over Penpal and hitting the Tilde key ~
That will temporarily maximize the panel and give you a lot more detail. To add a true zoom in function, we'd have to also add a pan for obvious reasons. And that is a pretty huge task. If we get enough customers asking for it, we'll definitely consider it.
I'm using 43" screen and I still may have only few pixels between some of the tightest spots to adjust. I get the issue and don't take this wrong, but Penpal just went from 5/5 to 3/5 and I don't mean that you would need to do anything about it as I can imagine it being a huge chore. Perhaps Penpal 3 can be 5/5 once again
Should the summer sale discount apply to upgrade price? If so, would consider upgrade.
Penpal is currently on sale because it falls under Tomas's author account as well as mine. If you log in, and check the product page, you will see the upgrade price for you.
Thanks @SteveKirby - I did see a discounted price (of $30 vs $45) from the original, but thought that was just part of AEScripts Summer Sale. Just looked more carefully and saw that Penpal2 should go on sale in the 3rd week (July 8-12), so I'll check back then to see pricing. Thank again for your help.
I got it years ago when it first released so any chance I can at least get a discount, super excited to try out this new version.
Yes, upgrade details here: https://aescripts.com/penpal/#upgrade-notice
Please see this faq: https://aescripts.com/knowledgebase/index/view/faq/zxp-cep-extension-won-t-open/
Penpal’s only early adopters were the non-public beta-testers. Folks who purchased v1.0 weren’t guinea pigs. We could say that being early customers meant that they have been able to extract more value from the tool than later customers, because they have had the use of it for longer, and so this was the inherent reward for being early.
No-one who purchased Penpal v1 has to upgrade - you can just keep using v1.5. Just like some people still use Adobe CS6.
The convention here on aescripts is to give free upgrades to people who purchased within the previous one month. I think I have seen some products give a three month period. We chose to give six months. Lloyd (who runs aescripts) can confirm that this is more generous than most products on here. If you look at the upgrade pricing of After Effects tools outside of aescripts, I think you’ll find similar conventions.
Penpal 2 took months of work. It's not a point update.
or is it a feature and im missing something?
thx
Hey Daniel It is possible to build a tool like Penpal in such a way that it is constantly 'listening' for events that happen outside of itself - mainly mouse and keyboard clicks. Some other developers use a lot of listeners like this to maintain greater synchronization between After Effects and their tools. However… the more listeners we add to our tools, the more we make your computer slow down. If you have several third party tools that are built like this, all open at once, it will negatively impact the responsiveness of After Effects' user interface. As developers, we have to make choices about how we handle your computer's resources. Choices between being kinda 'greedy', at one extreme; and something more humble, at the other. I say humble because we don't make an assumption that our tool is the only one in your UI, or that it's more important to you than any others. We have chosen to compromise on the wow-factor of our tool, so that you are less likely to have to compromise in which tools you keep in your workspace. This decision is actually the more user-focused decision, when you bear in mind that we have thousands of users with many different workflows and expectations.
Penpal can export path data but I’m not sure what options C4D has for import. I know it can import illustrator files. What kind of import process would you like to see?
Rather than hitting Reload, you can also just double-click in an empty area of canvas.
Hey Coen. That wasn’t a special priority for us because you can already do it in AE by Option-clicking on a smooth point when you have the Pen tool (shortcut G) selected. You can select multiple smooth points and make them corner points with the same technique. In Penpal the quickest way to do this is to go to the tangents tab, drag a marquee over the tangents you want to zero (eg both of a pair) and hit the delete key. That does the same thing as the zero tangents button. Corner points are the same thing as points with zero tangents. Technically, all points ‘have’ tangents, it’s just that some tangents have a value of [0,0] and thus no effect on the curve of that segment.
Yes. See full upgrade details here: https://aescripts.com/penpal/#upgrade-notice
Hey Mike.
More info on parametric vs bezier path shapes here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVepzaUT6Dw
If you definitely have a path in your layer and it's not loading in Penpal, that's bad - please open a support ticket and I can troubleshoot it with you.
Thatr solves it, working now - thanks for the quick response
Hey Neil. Have you tried these steps: https://support.animatable.co/v/penpal-user-guide/faqs#when-i-click-on-window-greater-than-extensions-greater-than-penpal-nothing-happens. If you have tried this and still see a blank panel, which version of AE are you using?
Hi Alexander. We haven’t added a merge paths function, mostly because it already exists inside After Effects, where it’s non-destructive, and we have to focus on providing things you can’t already do natively.
There isn’t. The canvas area kinda needs to stay focussed on paths themselves. If we added fills I think it would become hard to see everything.
Penpal is a really good tool though!
Yes. Just hit the delete key when you’re in the points tab and any selected points will be deleted. https://support.animatable.co/v/penpal-user-guide/keyboard-shortcuts
Yes! Just make sure you’re in the Points tab and hit delete. (In the tangents tab it would zero selected tangents).