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christophecuny
Inspiring
February 3, 2018
Answered

Grouping effects and applying as a black box?

  • February 3, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 828 views

Hello again,

This is something I have been trying to do in Premiere as well as Aafter Effects, but it it is probably just not possible.

I have a number of effects I want to reuse using the same parameters and settings. I can save animation presets and also found out that I could save several effects and their settings in one go (as one user defined preset), which is great.

When I apply this combined user preset, it all works fine, but it lays out the presets in the same way as they were saved, that is as individual presets. When I use several of those grouped user presets, I would much rather see them applied as a group, much as I would group layers in Photoshop. Can I not do this?

Also, when I save a preset and bring it back in, it does not have the user -defined name I gave it in the Effects Control panel, but the name of the original native effect. Premiere also does that but it does have the decency to at least put the user-defined name in brackets after the native effect name. Ideally, I would prefer just seeing my user defined name in both Premiere and After Effects. Even more so when I save a group of effect presets as described above.

Finally, though I suppose that's a no if none of the above can be addressed, is it possible to apply a saved effect preset or save group of presets as a black box, meaning that the original parameters cannot be altered?

Thank you for your advice.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Rick Gerard

    Again, if you want to lock something then define the value in an expression. Almost every parameter is lockable. If you can add an expression to a property you can probably lock it.

    As far as applying LUTs through Lumetri then some, not all, but some of those parameters are lockable. You cannot generate a curve with expressions or pick a preset and lock it.

    A general color correction that will apply your carefully designed look to footage without changes cannot be successfully created because every shot is different, the color balance is different, the average gamma is different. Color correction can generally be applied to an entire film but every scene needs its own color fine-tuning. I'm currently color grading a short film and one key scene was carefully lit and shot. Every aspect of the exposure was discussed with the camera operator, the DP. Every bit of the lighting was locked down before filming began on this indoor location. The lenses were Zeiss primes are perfectly color matched, the ISO setting was the same, the T-Stop (f-stop) was always F4 and when it came to the final color grading of the scene everything shot from stage right had a slight yellow shift in the highlights because of reflected light coming from the left. None of those yellow highlights existed in the shots from stage left. A general LUT (color grade) was applied through with an adjustment layer to the 26 shots that made up the scene and an additional LUT was applied to all of the 9 shots that came from Camera Right where we just pulled down the yellow saturation in the highlights. Only 2 of the 9 shots used exactly the same settings. Leaving the yellow highlights alone was not an option.

    The point of the story, there is no one color correction that will work for every scene in every film and locking your look is not going to guarantee that any two shots will look the same.

    My instructions for saving an animation preset work without keyframes. All modified properties of an effect are saved including any custom names you have given to the effects unless you select a specific property in the effect. If you have applied 20 effects to a layer and modified most of the properties in all 20 effects and renamed 18 of the 20, just selecting Effects in the timeline will preserve everything that has been modified. If you select one property or all properties in all of the effects then the custom names will not be saved and if you happened to miss one effect that you modified, like a color for a Tint effect, then that property will not be included in the animation preset. I hope that is clear. It's really easy to do right. It is more difficult, and unfortunately more common to do it wrong.

    I hope this answers some of your questions. The short answer to the original post is "save an animation preset using the proper technique and everything is preserved. Many, probably most properties can be locked using an expression." The question you should probably be asking yourself is saving a completely locked color grading preset a good idea because every shot responds a little differently to color grading.

    2 replies

    R
    Community Expert
    Rick GerardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 4, 2018

    Most people that start out saving animation prests are trying to hard and fouling things up. Start by pressing the U key twice to reveal all modified properties. Here is where the user errors start happening:

    In an effort to select all of the things you want to animate you start selecting everything with keyframes. This fouls things up. A typical selection looks like this but will not work properly.

    This is the correct way to make the selections and will preserve custom names names and all modified properties in both the masks and the effects.

    If you have more than one effect on a layer but you only want one of them then this is how you select the properties you want to save as an animation preset:

    Selecting any property inside the effect will cause any renamed properties and any other property that has been modified, like the blue fill in this example, to be missed. Saving animation presets has always worked this way. Select only the effects, transform properties, effects, and masks you want to save and you will be OK. Never select a property inside an effect.

    The careful naming of your animation presets is the only way help you tie them to specific layers. There is no group function that will allow you to save one animation preset and apply it to a bunch of individual layers with a single click. That would require scripting.

    I have more than 200 custom presets and a lot of them use controllers attached to nulls. For example my 3D collision.ffx needs a controller layer named 3dC controller with a bunch of sliders or the expressions to work. I have named the preset that loads up the effects controls "3D collision 3dC.ffx" so I know that I need to add a null and rename it to the timeline. I know it's a null because I always add controllers to a null and I know the name because 3dC is not descriptive and implies a name to me. Rename the null and apply the 3D collision controller 3dC.ffx to the null before I apply the 3D collision.ffx. Both effects of the required animation presets are right next to each other in the Effects and Presets Panel and in the file folder.

    I'm not sure what you mean when you are asking about saving a preset so the original parameters cannot be altered. If you want to lock a property just define it with an expression. For example, if you make the flare center for lens flare always be in the exact center of a comp add this expression to flare center:

    [thisComp.width/2, thisComp.height/2]

    If you wanted the upper left corner of any layer, no matter what the size, to always be at the upper right corner of a comp add this expression to position:

    [width/2, height/2]

    I hope this helps. Once you have done it right a few times and once you establish a naming convention it becomes much easier.

    One last tip. I save all my Custom AE Presets in Dropbox folder and then I created an alias to that folder that I can put in the default User Presets folder AE uses. I get a warning message when I'm saving new presets but I ignore it because I know that the alias will find any preset I save in the Dropbox folder and  they will show up in the Effects and Presets Panel and be searchable.

      Roland Kahlenberg
      Roland Kahlenberg
      Legend
      February 4, 2018

      --------------------------

      When I use several of those grouped user presets, I would much rather see them applied as a group, much as I would group layers in Photoshop. Can I not do this?

      Ideally, I would prefer just seeing my user defined name in both Premiere and After Effects. Even more so when I save a group of effect presets as described above.

      --------------------------

      Nope! The closest you'll get to this sort of funtionality is to create a PseudoFX.

      ----------------------------

      Finally, though I suppose that's a no if none of the above can be addressed, is it possible to apply a saved effect preset or save group of presets as a black box, meaning that the original parameters cannot be altered?

      -----------------------------

      Look at creating MoGRTs for this sort of functionality. Additionally, in AE, without (outside of) Presets, you may use the Copy with Property Links feature to create a Master/Child Effect relationship between an effect and its instances.

      Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV
        C
        christophecunyAuthor
        Inspiring
        February 4, 2018

        Roland, I had heard about PseudoFX but had not investigated their use yet (newbie learner). I don’t know what MoGRTs are but again, I will look it up. Rick, thank you for another useful mini-tut. It sounds I have to go away and do some serious learning, but at least now, I know what I need to learn.

        What I meant by by black box and not being able to alter the setting of a saved effects group means the following. Imagine that I create a look for my video that is want others to apply as standard to their footage. That look is rather heavy duty when it comes to effects applied (none with keyframing): a whole bunch of video effects and a LUT (which I guess creates an external dependency). What I wanted to achieve was to group those effects (which I did selecting them all in the Effects Control Panel and saving as a preset). Subsequently, I want to send my user-defined preset to a bunch of video submitters so they can all apply that one look and feel to the submitted video. But when the group preset is recalled, I would like to lock it to avoid any departure from the parameters I set, so that the look and feel's integrity is not compromised. So that questions should really have been formulated more clearly as:  what is the best way to let other users apply a group of effects I created without being able to alter the settings in the Effects Control Panel? As if that saved group presets was just one single effect with no parameter change.

        Perhaps the answer already lies in one of your pointers.

        Just a final thought: I refer to presets saved as animation presets, because that is what they are called when you save them with the menu, but in my lowly example, I was not trying to save a preset with keyframes at all. It was just a selection of video effects and LUTs: all located in the Effects Control Panel, all saved from the Effects Control panel only, no keyframes involved. I should have included screenshots,

        Would it not still be useful to have a group of effects saved as a group marked as a group under its user specified name when recalled? And if that is really not possible, at least to allow separators between effects created one by one and recalled groups of effects (at least that would provide a useful visual separation in the Effects Control Panel).

        Thank you both very much  I am off to learn more about all your suggestions.

        R
        Community Expert
        Rick GerardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
        Community Expert
        February 5, 2018

        Again, if you want to lock something then define the value in an expression. Almost every parameter is lockable. If you can add an expression to a property you can probably lock it.

        As far as applying LUTs through Lumetri then some, not all, but some of those parameters are lockable. You cannot generate a curve with expressions or pick a preset and lock it.

        A general color correction that will apply your carefully designed look to footage without changes cannot be successfully created because every shot is different, the color balance is different, the average gamma is different. Color correction can generally be applied to an entire film but every scene needs its own color fine-tuning. I'm currently color grading a short film and one key scene was carefully lit and shot. Every aspect of the exposure was discussed with the camera operator, the DP. Every bit of the lighting was locked down before filming began on this indoor location. The lenses were Zeiss primes are perfectly color matched, the ISO setting was the same, the T-Stop (f-stop) was always F4 and when it came to the final color grading of the scene everything shot from stage right had a slight yellow shift in the highlights because of reflected light coming from the left. None of those yellow highlights existed in the shots from stage left. A general LUT (color grade) was applied through with an adjustment layer to the 26 shots that made up the scene and an additional LUT was applied to all of the 9 shots that came from Camera Right where we just pulled down the yellow saturation in the highlights. Only 2 of the 9 shots used exactly the same settings. Leaving the yellow highlights alone was not an option.

        The point of the story, there is no one color correction that will work for every scene in every film and locking your look is not going to guarantee that any two shots will look the same.

        My instructions for saving an animation preset work without keyframes. All modified properties of an effect are saved including any custom names you have given to the effects unless you select a specific property in the effect. If you have applied 20 effects to a layer and modified most of the properties in all 20 effects and renamed 18 of the 20, just selecting Effects in the timeline will preserve everything that has been modified. If you select one property or all properties in all of the effects then the custom names will not be saved and if you happened to miss one effect that you modified, like a color for a Tint effect, then that property will not be included in the animation preset. I hope that is clear. It's really easy to do right. It is more difficult, and unfortunately more common to do it wrong.

        I hope this answers some of your questions. The short answer to the original post is "save an animation preset using the proper technique and everything is preserved. Many, probably most properties can be locked using an expression." The question you should probably be asking yourself is saving a completely locked color grading preset a good idea because every shot responds a little differently to color grading.

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