AFTER EFFECTS WISHLIST

Andy Bay

Known Participant

The main reason I use photoshop over AE in some situations is the ability to make good selections/mattes.

I would like to see the possibility to make photoshop-style selections also inside AE. For example, it would be nice to have a magic wand/quick selection kind of tool that would automatically create mask shapes on layers based on mouse clicks.

Inspiring

How about an HDR color picker?

These guys are doing some really interesting things with HDR color and negative light.

http://www.filterforge.com/download/beta2/hdr-support.html

Known Participant

How about this one -- I'm sure someone brought this up before -- the ability to open more than a single project at once.

niwrat

Participating Frequently

I'd love the ability to access the Mesh data of the puppet tool via script. This would allow the export of the vertex points and let you do things such as creating puppet-like animations in real time in Flash (easily using engines such as Away3D, or custom built for this purpose).

Andy Bay

Known Participant

I'd like to see a Premiere Pro -style cross dissolve effect. Maybe there is some better way that I'm not aware of, but at the moment I'm creating cross dissolves by adding opacity keyframes, which can get a bit tedious if you need a lot cross dissolves in your timeline.

S

ShrikeVFX

Participating Frequently

I haven't checked to be fully sure, but I'd bet 99% that there is something like this in the animation presets. I do my xsitions by hand so that's why I am not fully sure. But research animation presets and you will find what you are looking for

Inspiring

If you use the Duplicate command on a folder, the new duped comp references the old footage. To me, that doesn't make sense. Everything in the duplicated folder should reference the same files, but in the new duplicated path.

I wish this would get "fixed", or have an option for relative vs. absolute duplicates.

Current Behavior (absolute path)	Desired Behavior (relative path)

Aaron Cobb

Inspiring

The complicating factor here is that folders in the project panel don't necessarily reflect the structure of the comp/footage networks you want to duplicate (i.e. the source footage or nested comps might be on an entirely different path). I'd like to see a "duplicate comp network" command to do what you are requesting.

I keep meaning to write a script to do this, but I never quite get around to it.

Inspiring

I completely see your point of view. But to me, when you hit Duplicate on a folder, you are cloning the folder "universe", so assets should refer to the relative paths in their "solar system" if possible. The behavior I want is the same as if I did a collect file, then imported that aep as another project.

Known Participant

You know, there's one more "request" I want to add: Is there any way to add a Text field control to the existing Slider, Checkbox, etc. in the Effects -> Expression controls?

Inspiring

I believe this is accomplished now by pickwhipping to a text layer's "Text Source" property... which is also keyframable! By having an Expression text control, you'd lose all sorts of formatting and manual kerning. If you have used any old effects that require you to type into a text box, it's a pain.

How would a text box be better?

Aaron Cobb

Inspiring

That's what I typically do, though there are some instances where I find using the layer name or even a property name (for properties with editable names) is a better solution.

That said, if you are using any of these methods to put text into a text layer's Source Text property, you will lose all that special formatting anyway. Every character will be formatted with the properties of the first character in the modified text layer's original source text.

Known Participant

This thread is too big to read it all, so I apologize if this was brought up before:

1. For us, Windows users, can you please include Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete into the pop-up context menus. (I know, Adobe crowd uses keyboard shortcuts, but I spent too much time in Windows and do it faster with the mouse right-clicks and menus)

2. In case of autosave, can you PLEASE remove that annoying message box window when the autosave happens? Mine is set to once every 5 minutes and what happens is that if I'm working on something, like adjusting a mask, or something involving dragging of a mouse, when the autosave message box pops up it throws the mouse process, or selection off. This can be very annoying at times.

3. Maybe there's a way to speed up the loading process for AE. By that I mean selective loading of plug-ins "on-demand", or load them only when we need them.

PS. Thank you to whoever started this thread. Also thank you to Adobe people that might be browsing, and hopefully listening to this.

S

ShrikeVFX

Participating Frequently

You can rt click and select a command form a contextual menu and then click it faster than you can hit Ctrl-C? I doubt it.

Not trying to be an ass here, but for the few times that I DO use contextual rt click menus, I would be ANNOYED if I had to look at those extraneous commands each time.

Let me help you with the hotkeys:

cut - ctrl/cmd-x

copy - ctrl/cmd-c

paste - ctrl/cmd-v

delete - ummmmmm

As for the autosave, are you talking about the indicator that it is actually saving it? Because I don't know of any other message boxes. If that is what you are talking about I think this would be virtually impossible to remove as it is just going through the process of saving.

I personally don't use autosave, and this is one of the reasons I don't. I don't want it interrupting my workflow. But after years of working and having been brutally BURNED a few times, I generally save a few times per MINUTE, unless the project is getting too large, and then I save as often as I can without severely slowing me down.

Oh, and that's save - ctrl/cmd-s

Known Participant

Chas, I agree that most Adobe products are made with an assumption that the keyboard shortcuts will be used instead of context menus (that is mostly due to Mac users that didn't even have right mouse buttons). But again, in my case, by being a long-term Windows user -- this is a habbit that I cannot really do anything about. I also agree that inclusion of such context menu commands may distract the "loyal" AE users, but they may be added upon request in the Preferences window.

As for my personal opinion about keyboard shortcuts, then I definitely like them and use them as well. Obviously, Cut/Copy/Paste are the most commonly used (and universal) ones. But, in my opinion, there are several issues that may arrise due to excessive number of keyboard shortcuts in a product (like AE), namely:

1. For a user interface as "busy" as in AE, it is sometimes difficult [for me] to tell what control/window/pane/element is currently selected. (It is not as strongly highlighted as in other software products.) Thus simply hitting Ctrl+C may copy something that I did not intend to copy, and believe me I've done it so many times. But, right-clicking an element and seleting Copy from the menu will guarantee that the intended element is copied.

2. Having too many keyboard shortcuts may result in an inadvertant activation of some unintended function. I've done this so many times as well. I may accidentally hit a keyboard button, or do it when something else is selected and "mess up" a layer/value only to discover it later when it's too late to undo the damage. (I understand that layers/masks have locks for this purpose but lets face it, it is quite easy to forget to lock a layer or a mask.)

Now regarding the autosave window. I do know about the Ctrl+S shortcut (it is also kinda universal). I was like you, heavily relying on my memory to do the trivial task of saving.... I started using the autosave option after AE suddenly crashed after about 15 minutes of my intense work when unfortunately I didn't remember to save the project manually. And, AE is very good at crashing, especially on complex projects. It taught me a lesson and, as a side note, this autosave option works great except this little nuisance with a popping message box.

And yes, you understood it right. The message box pops up when the actual saving is done to tell me simply that :). But there's one thing I will disagree with you, and that is that this message is absolutely essential. I'm a Windows developer myself and I know quite well that both Windows and OS X are multitasking systems and the job of saving the project can be done in the background thread without the interruption of the workflow. (That is how it's done in the MS Office, for instance.) So it is absolutely possible to accomplish this, and the way it should be done is through a status bar message (at the bottom of the main window) that will not switch a current keyboard/mouse focus to itself like the message box does.

Inspiring

Here's a no brainer -- how about adding "Reveal Composition in Project" when you right click a comp tab?

(As it is now, you have to find a blank area without any layers to right click in, right?)