rd: Studio Techniques
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Compatibility After Effects Please check exact version compatibility under the "COMPATIBILITY" tab below
These tools are excerpted from Adobe After Effects CC Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen. (c) 2013. Published by Adobe Press. All rights reserved. A complete chapter on scripting by Jeff Almasol is included with the book.
Scripts included in this bundle:
- rd_CameraProjectionSetup.jsx: Automates most of the steps required to set up the camera projection technique in The Camera and Options chapter. The script creates a single "backing" plane, so you will still need to create any additional planes needed. Also, the content-specific procedures described in step 7 (masking, scaling, and repositioning the planes) will need to be performed manually. Sorry, scripting isn't THAT good. :-)
- rd_Duplink.jsx: Displays a palette with controls for creating linked instances of a selected layer's properties. These links are made via pick-whipped expressions, so only those properties that can use expressions can be linked. Create duplicates or "instances" of a layer, which allow you to change the main layer and have its instance layers update as well.
- rd_LightWrap.jsx: Creates the light wrap effect using the technique described in the Light chapter of the book. In addition, it adds a Contamination and Wrap Offset controls to the precomp layer for easier adjustment, and ties the position, scale, and rotation properties from the foreground and background layers to those in the precomp to synchronize any transformations you decide to do.
- rd_MergeProjects.jsx: Displays a palette with controls for merging a selected project folder's contents up to the root of the Project panel. Use this tool when you have imported a project into another, and want to merge subfolders and their contents with existing same-named subfolders at the root-level of the project, keeping your Project panel more organized.
- rd_Slated.jsx: Renders slates, single-frame images of a specific template composition whose data is fed by the information in a text file exported from a spreadsheet.
- rd_TrimToZeroOpacityKeys.jsx: Trims the transparent ends of the selected layers by trimming to the first and last Opacity keyframes with zero value.
- rd_TrimZeroOpacity.jsx: Trims the transparent ends of the selected layers by trimming to the first and last frame that doesn't have a zero value for Opacity. Unlike the rd_TrimToZeroOpacityKeys.jsx script, this one will evaluate expression values and also trim as much as possible (if multiple adjacent frames have the same zero value). Because multiple frames can be evaluated per layer, i might take a little longer to process lots of layers.
After Effects | CC, CS6 |
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1.2 (Current version) - May 10, 2013
Added small UI tweaks for CC, and cleaned up some code.
- v1.1 - Small updates for distribution on aescripts.com, and to fix an issue with the rd_Slater.aep project that could cause the text layers to not be updated correctly. (13-nov-2012)
- v1.0 - Initial versions for CS6 edition of the book's DVD. (29-may-2012)