Automation Blocks for After Effects
  • Matthew PhelanMatthew Phelan
    Looks interesting but cannot justify such an expensive subscription price.
  • Craig KuehneCraig Kuehne
    I had also planned on buying this, until I saw the subscription price. Beyond that, is there a plan on selling a "perpetual license", non-subscription version as an option?
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Matthew, Marcelo and Craig,

    thank you for your feedback! After getting so much feedback in this direction, we decided to switch plans and offer a perpetual license now.
    (And everybody who purchased a subscription so far, will be upgraded to a permanent license for free).

    Cheers,
    Mathias

    Craig Kuehne said:
    I had also planned on buying this, until I saw the subscription price. Beyond that, is there a plan on selling a "perpetual license", non-subscription version as an option?
    Marcelo Arias said:
    Matthew Phelan said:
    Looks interesting but cannot justify such an expensive subscription price.
    Wow! I was thinking in buying it till I saw this. Crazy!
    Matthew Phelan said:
    Looks interesting but cannot justify such an expensive subscription price.

  • Charles MarshallCharles Marshall
    I too was caught off guard by the subscription price, but Mathias is correct about this tool's worth.

    I can see how this tool might save me a ton of time and with all its possibilities, take me in directions of which I would not have known 
    without access to this kind of automation & programming power.  

    I'm a mid-level freelancer and I'm heavily considering a 365-test drive.  
    This might be like the iPhone and iPad: I didn't know I needed it until I had it.

    Good luck, Fellow Minions!..
    Charlie
  • Charles MarshallCharles Marshall
    Ok, I've just spent the last 1.5 hours learning how I'm going to save nearly 1000 hours.

    Before you decide, look through the Overview page (https://mamoworld.com/docs/automation-blocks/)
    and see for yourself.  

    I'm just a motion designer with a first impression of this toolset, I have no affiliation or paid endorsement (though I wouldn't mind!...).
    I'd love to hear what other mographers think.

  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    We heard your feedback and decided to switch to perpetual licenses! 

    The community is a big aspect of Automation Blocks and we listen to your suggestions. If you purchased an annual subscription already, it will be converted to a perpetual license with no extra charge.
  • Craig KuehneCraig Kuehne
    Hi Mathias,

    That's great news! Thank you! While I appreciate your explanation about why you had not been offering perpetual licenses, I still have a limited annual budget I need to work with, and the $150 annual looked like a limited time offer, then it would move to $200.

    I'm purchasing this now, without hesitation!

    Thank you, again!

    mamoworld Möhl said:
    We heard your feedback and decided to switch to perpetual licenses! 

    The community is a big aspect of Automation Blocks and we listen to your suggestions. If you purchased an annual subscription already, it will be converted to a perpetual license with no extra charge.

  • Pascal FuerstPascal Fuerst
    Hey Mathias,
    great work on the tool. It looks like a pretty useful toolkit.

    Out of curiosity, would it be possible to use Automation Blocks to alter Mocha Import+ so that it uses the newer Maxon King Pin Tracker https://www.maxon.net/en/red-giant/vfx-suite/king-pin-tracker instead of the older Red Giant one which isn't developed anymore.

    Or maybe even to create a tool that sets up a unwarp-rewarp Comp Setup for the Mocha Mesh Warp? Right now I don't have the knowledge to set something like this up myself but maybe the community would be able to help here.

    Best
    Pascal
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Great idea, Pascal!

    I just added a tool to the Automation Blocks community library which replaces all CC Power Pin effects in the active composition and its precomps by corresponding King Pin effects. You find it in the community library now at
    Effects/Corner Pin/Replace CC Power Pin by King Pin
    Just create corner pins or stabilized precomps with MochaImport+ and then run the tool to replace the corner pin effects.

    I was not able to test it properly, yet, since I currently don't have a King Pin license (I could verify that the effects are created as expected, but could not check if the rendered result looks ok). I will do more in depth tests once I get a license from Maxon. In the meantime, please go ahead and try it yourself, I am pretty confident that it should work :-)

    Cheers
    Mathias

    Pascal Fuerst said:
    Hey Mathias,
    great work on the tool. It looks like a pretty useful toolkit.

    Out of curiosity, would it be possible to use Automation Blocks to alter Mocha Import+ so that it uses the newer Maxon King Pin Tracker https://www.maxon.net/en/red-giant/vfx-suite/king-pin-tracker instead of the older Red Giant one which isn't developed anymore.

    Or maybe even to create a tool that sets up a unwarp-rewarp Comp Setup for the Mocha Mesh Warp? Right now I don't have the knowledge to set something like this up myself but maybe the community would be able to help here.

    Best
    Pascal

  • Robert PenczakRobert Penczak
    Hey Mathias - 

    Can you compare & contrast this with the functionality of automation toolkit pro ( https://aescripts.com/automation-toolkit-pro/ )  Would like to understand whether or not they offer different functionality.  Thanks.
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Robert,

    as the developer of Automation Blocks, I am of course a bit biased. I just watched the overview video of Automation Toolkit and never worked with it myself. But my impression is that the difference in price is similar to the difference in functionality.
    First of all, Automation Blocks comes with a ton of ready to use tools, and I doubt that Automation Toolkit is powerful enough to create most of them. Working with spreadsheet files, creating custom user interfaces or structuring your code into nested functions are just some examples for advanced unique features of Automation Blocks.

    If you plan to create your own automations, I just recommend to watch the following two courses to get a very good idea about what Automation Blocks is capable of:
    I personally find the visual block system of Automation Blocks much easier to work with than the dropdown-based system of Automation Toolkit, but again, this might be my personal impression, since I am very much used to Autoomation Blocks.

    Robert Penczak said:
    Hey Mathias - 

    Can you compare & contrast this with the functionality of automation toolkit pro ( https://aescripts.com/automation-toolkit-pro/ )  Would like to understand whether or not they offer different functionality.  Thanks.

  • Robert PenczakRobert Penczak
    Got it - thanks for the quick reply - I'll take a look at those two videos and see if I can get a better feel for the full potential of Automation Blocks. 
  • Franz TomandlFranz Tomandl
    Hi! I'd very interested in getting this tool. Just wanted to know if it's as useful for Premiere Pro as is for AE for really basic tasks.

    I work for a youtuber editing his videos. There are some mechanical  tasks that could be instantly done by pasting a sound file on every marker in an adjustment layer, for example.

    Also would be nice if I could mark another adjustment layer with something like "Spooky music", then "rock music" and have one automation to automatically pick a random song from the imported "MUSIC" bin (Having multiple subbins with the genres)

    OH! It would also be cool If I could add randomly a group of 5 presets to a bunch of clips. Like, it's the same effect, just a different configuration. And adding that manually can be a pain

    I'm sure I might have more requests but, for now, If these can be achieve, you have a new user. 

    One more thing, is there a Premiere Pro Community Library?

    Thank you so much in advance for the attention
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Franz,

    the Premiere Pro version is still in development and the full set of features is not 100% clear, yet. You will definitely be able to import footage, to insert footage into a sequence and to read markers. And random numbers are supported, too. Hence, tasks like importing an entire folder of music files and inserting those randomly at markers sounds absolutely doable.

    In contrast to the Ae version, the Pr version will most likely have the following limitations:
    - no support for keyboard shortcuts (since Pr does not allow keyboard shortcuts for extensions in general, unfortunately)
    - creating custom user interfaces will be a bit more limited (again, because Pr's scripting engine has some limitations there).

    Franz Tomandl said:
    Hi! I'd very interested in getting this tool. Just wanted to know if it's as useful for Premiere Pro as is for AE for really basic tasks.

    I work for a youtuber editing his videos. There are some mechanical  tasks that could be instantly done by pasting a sound file on every marker in an adjustment layer, for example.

    Also would be nice if I could mark another adjustment layer with something like "Spooky music", then "rock music" and have one automation to automatically pick a random song from the imported "MUSIC" bin (Having multiple subbins with the genres)

    OH! It would also be cool If I could add randomly a group of 5 presets to a bunch of clips. Like, it's the same effect, just a different configuration. And adding that manually can be a pain

    I'm sure I might have more requests but, for now, If these can be achieve, you have a new user. 

    One more thing, is there a Premiere Pro Community Library?

    Thank you so much in advance for the attention

  • Kamani Romeo-ToneyKamani Romeo-Toney
    any way to open a morgrt with this?
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    There is no build-in function for opening a mogrt, but there is a block to execute a file, which you can use to execute .bat files on Windows or shell scripts on Mac OS, for example. Since mogrts are just zip folders with an Ae project inside, you could write a bat or shell script which unzips the mogrt and then open the unzipped project.
    Are you on Mac or Win?
  • Jozef BehrJozef Behr
    Woow Looking great ...
  • tran vuongtran vuong
    I using add keyframes but it get Error : execution result:"can only use a property and not a property group here:/Comp 2::Shape Layer 2 (line 11)" destructor final end point 'main script' reached ? I follow video tutorial?
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Tran,
    best post a question about this in the Adobe forum and include your code and ideally a screenshot of it.
    In general, the error message sounds like you try to apply keyframes to a layer instead of a property: You cannot apply keyframes to "Shape Layer 2". You need to specify, to which property of the Layer "Shape Layer 2" you want to apply the keyframes.

    tran vuong said:
    I using add keyframes but it get Error : execution result:"can only use a property and not a property group here:/Comp 2::Shape Layer 2 (line 11)" destructor final end point 'main script' reached ? I follow video tutorial?

  • tran vuongtran vuong
    mamoworld Möhl said:
    Hi Tran,
    best post a question about this in the Adobe forum and include your code and ideally a screenshot of it.
    In general, the error message sounds like you try to apply keyframes to a layer instead of a property: You cannot apply keyframes to "Shape Layer 2". You need to specify, to which property of the Layer "Shape Layer 2" you want to apply the keyframes.

    tran vuong said: thanks ^^ It work very well
    I using add keyframes but it get Error : execution result:"can only use a property and not a property group here:/Comp 2::Shape Layer 2 (line 11)" destructor final end point 'main script' reached ? I follow video tutorial?


    thanks ^^ It work very well
  • Franz TomandlFranz Tomandl
    Hi there,


    I hope it can get reviewed or atleast maybe letting me know that it is not possible to do it. 

    Thank you in advance
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Franz,

    ok, I just answered your request.
    Franz Tomandl said:
    Hi there,


    I hope it can get reviewed or atleast maybe letting me know that it is not possible to do it. 

    Thank you in advance

  • Shawn SmithShawn Smith
    Does Perpetual license mean the same as a lifetime license.   In other words, i pay once and get updates for life?  
  • Lloyd AlvarezLloyd Alvarez
    Shawn Smith said:
    Does Perpetual license mean the same as a lifetime license.   In other words, i pay once and get updates for life?  

    it means the license will not expire. Minor upgrades, like 1.1, 1.2 etc are free, major upgrades, like 2.0 are paid but as an existing license owner you would get a disoxunt
  • Shawn SmithShawn Smith
    Lloyd Alvarez said:
    Shawn Smith said:
    Does Perpetual license mean the same as a lifetime license.   In other words, i pay once and get updates for life?  

    it means the license will not expire. Minor upgrades, like 1.1, 1.2 etc are free, major upgrades, like 2.0 are paid but as an existing license owner you would get a disoxunt
    Thank you!
  • Sabine FürederSabine Füreder
    Hi, I am very interested in this tool and I already tried the "Create Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheets" script with the trial version. But it left me with a lot of duplicate pre comps with the same name and content.

    Is it possible to write another script for consolidating comps (similar to the "Consolidate All Footage" function in AE) to eliminate duplicated comps in the project?

    I guess this would involve in short going through all the comps in the project bin, then looking if another comp with the same name exists, and if yes reveal it in the comps where the duplicate comp is used, replace it/them with the first comp and delete that duplicated comp. But could not find out yet if the step "reveal it in the comps and replace with another comp" is possible with Automation Blocks?

    Thanks!
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Sabine,
    the easiest thing is probably to make sure that the precomps are not duplicated at all. You have two options:
    1) By default, the "Create Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheets" does NOT duplicate a precomp, if the precomp layer is locked. Hence, you can simply lock all precomp layers to avoid duplicating them.
    2) You could change the block code to do not duplicate precomps, even if they are not locked. For this just uncheck the checkbox in the block code at the arrow in the attached image.


    Sabine Füreder said:
    Hi, I am very interested in this tool and I already tried the "Create Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheets" script with the trial version. But it left me with a lot of duplicate pre comps with the same name and content.

    Is it possible to write another script for consolidating comps (similar to the "Consolidate All Footage" function in AE) to eliminate duplicated comps in the project?

    I guess this would involve in short going through all the comps in the project bin, then looking if another comp with the same name exists, and if yes reveal it in the comps where the duplicate comp is used, replace it/them with the first comp and delete that duplicated comp. But could not find out yet if the step "reveal it in the comps and replace with another comp" is possible with Automation Blocks?

    Thanks!

    Screenshot 2023-01-11 at 18.43.06.png
    1159 x 739 - 159K
  • Sabine FürederSabine Füreder
    mamoworld Möhl said:
    Hi Sabine,
    the easiest thing is probably to make sure that the precomps are not duplicated at all. You have two options:
    1) By default, the "Create Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheets" does NOT duplicate a precomp, if the precomp layer is locked. Hence, you can simply lock all precomp layers to avoid duplicating them.
    2) You could change the block code to do not duplicate precomps, even if they are not locked. For this just uncheck the checkbox in the block code at the arrow in the attached image.

    Thanks for the fast reply and the tips! This would avoid certain kind of duplicated pre comps. Still I would be left with some duplicate comps that are created by the script.


    Let’s say I create a template for a product video containing one pre-comp for the product image and one pre-comp for the call-to-action. If I let the script create videos with all possible combinations for 5 different products and 5 different CTAs, I end up with 5 exact duplicates for each product pre-comp as well as for each of the CTA options.


    Or would there be a simple amend to the script to re-use the already created comps?


  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Sabine,
    ok, this is interesting and looks like a more complex discussion. Could you please create a post in the Adobe forum about this?
    There it is easier for others to find and join the discussion.

    Sabine Füreder said:
    mamoworld Möhl said:
    Hi Sabine,
    the easiest thing is probably to make sure that the precomps are not duplicated at all. You have two options:
    1) By default, the "Create Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheets" does NOT duplicate a precomp, if the precomp layer is locked. Hence, you can simply lock all precomp layers to avoid duplicating them.
    2) You could change the block code to do not duplicate precomps, even if they are not locked. For this just uncheck the checkbox in the block code at the arrow in the attached image.

    Thanks for the fast reply and the tips! This would avoid certain kind of duplicated pre comps. Still I would be left with some duplicate comps that are created by the script.


    Let’s say I create a template for a product video containing one pre-comp for the product image and one pre-comp for the call-to-action. If I let the script create videos with all possible combinations for 5 different products and 5 different CTAs, I end up with 5 exact duplicates for each product pre-comp as well as for each of the CTA options.


    Or would there be a simple amend to the script to re-use the already created comps?



  • Sabine FürederSabine Füreder
    mamoworld Möhl said:
    Hi Sabine,
    ok, this is interesting and looks like a more complex discussion. Could you please create a post in the Adobe forum about this?
    There it is easier for others to find and join the discussion.

    Sure, you can find it here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/consolidate-duplicate-precomps-when-using-quot-duplicates-from-spreadsheet-quot-script-by-automation/m-p/13487431#M221234

    Thanks!
  • Robin CarloRobin Carlo
    Hello,

    Your plugin looks really powerful!

    Is it possible to inject time data (from spreadsheet) with the "Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheet" features?

    Use case: I have a client who needs to extract different clips from a podcast. He would like to have time data in his spreadsheet (e.g., TC in: 30s and TC out: 45s) so that AE/Automation Blocs can do the rest (trim the podcast at the right time and also the comp).
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Robin,
    I would not use the "Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheet" example for that. This example is about replacing values like text, footage or slider values. If you don't need any of that and just want to batch-trim clips, it would be much easier to create a new Automation Blocks script from scratch for that.

    I just wrote a little example, which takes a spreadsheet and the renders one section of the active comp for each row of the spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet you just list the in-time out-time and filename you want for that section.

    I recorded this quick tutorial showing the tool:


    You find the tool in the Community Library at
    Render Queue/Render Sections Of Comp Based On Spreadsheet.xml

    Here is the direct link to the xml file.

    If you have further questions about the tool or ideas how to improve it, best start a forum discussion, since there discussion is much easier.


    Robin Carlo said:
    Hello,

    Your plugin looks really powerful!

    Is it possible to inject time data (from spreadsheet) with the "Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheet" features?

    Use case: I have a client who needs to extract different clips from a podcast. He would like to have time data in his spreadsheet (e.g., TC in: 30s and TC out: 45s) so that AE/Automation Blocs can do the rest (trim the podcast at the right time and also the comp).

  • Robin CarloRobin Carlo
    Wow! Thank you very much for your quick (and amazing) answer!

    I'm going to try that right away!

    For more context: In fact, I wanted to use "Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheet" because the content also changes according to the clip (text, image, etc.). Now that I know it's possible to get time data from a spreadsheet and change the work area, I think I'm going to find a good workflow for my use case!

    Thanks again!
    mamoworld Möhl said:
    Hi Robin,
    I would not use the "Comp Duplicates from Spreadsheet" example for that. This example is about replacing values like text, footage or slider values. If you don't need any of that and just want to batch-trim clips, it would be much easier to create a new Automation Blocks script from scratch for that.

    I just wrote a little example, which takes a spreadsheet and the renders one section of the active comp for each row of the spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet you just list the in-time out-time and filename you want for that section.

    I recorded this quick tutorial showing the tool:


    You find the tool in the Community Library at
    Render Queue/Render Sections Of Comp Based On Spreadsheet.xml

    Here is the direct link to the xml file.

    If you have further questions about the tool or ideas how to improve it, best start a forum discussion, since there discussion is much easier.
  • bogeun kimbogeun kim
    I ran the plugin but there was no response. I am using version 2024, and installed it on March 3, 2024. Installation was carried out through the manager. How should I approach this?
  • mamoworld Möhlmamoworld Möhl
    Hi Bogeun,

    if the panel does not open, see this solution:

    bogeun kim said:
    I ran the plugin but there was no response. I am using version 2024, and installed it on March 3, 2024. Installation was carried out through the manager. How should I approach this?

  • bogeun kimbogeun kim
    Very friendly response. Very quick solution. Just amazing . He acted perfectly for his customers.


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