An Animation Dope Sheet in After Effects

Please add a dedicated animation Dope Sheet to Adobe After Effects. This would not replace the existing Timeline or Graph Editor (though it could be combined with the graph editor). Instead, it would provide a higher-level animation timing view designed specifically for blocking, retiming, spacing decisions, pose timing, and coordinating animation across many layers and properties. A true dope sheet would make After Effects significantly more efficient for character animation, motion design, explainer animation, rigged 2D animation, UI animation, kinetic typography, and hybrid 2D/3D production.

The Current Problem

The current After Effects Timeline is very powerful, but it becomes difficult to manage when a composition contains many animated layers, rigged character controls, shape layers, text animators, effects, masks, and nested precomps. Animators often need to understand the timing structure of an animation before they need to fine-tune curves. In those moments, the Graph Editor is too detailed, and the Timeline can become too visually dense.

For example, when animating a character, title sequence, UI transition, or complex motion graphics scene, the animator may need to answer questions such as:

• Where are the main poses or timing accents?
• Which layers hit on the same frame?
• Which elements are leading or following?
• Where are the holds, breakdowns, anticipations, overshoots, and settles?
• How can a section of animation be retimed without digging through dozens of expanded properties?
• How can pose timing be adjusted before the animator commits to detailed easing?

At the moment, this work often requires manually expanding and collapsing properties, selecting many separate keyframes, using markers, shifting layer bars, or jumping between the Timeline and Graph Editor. This slows down timing decisions and makes larger animation changes more error-prone.