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Participant
October 26, 2022
Question

speed up workflow - inspire, make it easier, intuitive (dont interrupt and dont add more buttons)

  • October 26, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 164 views

This Post is to highlight 1 big request. Aftereffects became a bottleneck in creation. The user request on trackmatte reusability was fantastic, implementation a terrible compromise.

Heres the idea: Speed up the workflow, inspire, make it easier, intuitive (dont interrupt and dont add more buttons).

1 - when opening load footage in background, so we can do stuff such as exporting a camera, checking comp res, etc... autosave in background, so we can do stuff ... render in background, so we continue doing stuff

2 - bring project manager to 2023. make it as we like it, thumbnail, list, details view, order by date, location without adding columns, but a dropdown, you get the idea. remove useless preview on top

3 - declutter UI everywhere especially in timeling. Remove all these buttes next to the footage and solve it with nodes, so we can do stuff.  nodes, cool stuff, check it out. 
4 - let more than one footage sit on a line (like Premiere), which is possible if nodebased, so we can add more stuff, which means we can create more stuff.
5 - check how Blender or other 3D software  speeds up navigation, tangenthandling, keyframing, compy pasting or scaling in grapheditor, everywhere it is lightning fast, simple and convenient. That said it needs a propper grapheditor, its not 2010.
6 - shortcuts on UI window. the shortcuts should be used multiple ways depending on where the mouse is. example for Aftereffects:
press S in timeline scale unfolds on layer
press S in viewport the footage scales with mousemove
press S in grapheditor you scale tangens, multiple keys.
same for move, rotate, etc..

I am an animator and compositor. I am using all adobe products, Aftereffects extensivly (now I do almost everything in Blender what I did before in Aftereffects). I use Maya, Cinema4D, Blender, Unity 3Dcoat, Unreal, Zbrush, TvPaint,... list goes on, so I work my way through many UIs and workflows.
no program is perfect, but Aftereffects needs help...

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1 reply

JohnColombo17100380
Community Manager
Community Manager
October 26, 2022

Hi @simong60617375,

Thanks for making this post and for the thought you've put into these suggestions. We share the desire to speed up workflows, inspire creativity, and make the After Effects experience easier and more intuitive.

 

That said, in order to properly have conversations around specific improvements and gauge the support of the After Effects community for those ideas, we need these requests separated into different threads rather than a single post containing a list. Please see the pinned post here for guidance. Since your post does not follow those guidelines for a single Idea, I've moved it to the Discussion section where the conversation can continue without causing confusion in the Ideas section. E.g. how could someone vote for one idea above the others, or have a discussion about their support for only one? For each request, please make one Idea post.

 

Some of your listed requests already exist as Ideas to which you can add your vote and thoughts, like autosaving in the background.

 

Thanks again,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

Participant
October 29, 2022

hello john, thanks for the reply, good to know it is read.
I agree that the place might not be the right one to place the feedback.

Still I see it as one issue, rather than feature list. These points are examples of Aftereffects weakness. Ordering their relevance through voting wont solve the big picture. If Adobe does a usability analysis, the nescessary features (such as autosave) come automatically.

That said, I would love to contribute to Adobe on finding UI/workflow bottlenecks. rather than the bugfixes or features. Is there a place, where the community works on that. I would appreciate if you could give me a pointer.
Thanks