"The Global Switches" idea..

[mateuszs65813689]

Hi,

Would it be possible to add this kind of feature into After Effect in future?

Lets call it "Global Switches", how it should work:
- we are creating a single "global switch"
- under it we can search for every effect

- after finding effect we want we are clicking OK and the one global switch is created

- we can rename it for example "CC Force Motion Blur"

- right now, every time we check/uncheck out "CC Force Motion Blur" global switch

every "CC Force Motion Blur" effect in our project or comosition will be turned on/off

This would help turning on/off effects that can take a long time to render, and we want to make a quick preview..

[Paul Tuersley]

You can easily find and turn multiple effects on/off with my pt_EffectSearch script:

https://aescripts.com/pt_effectsearch/

I'm always wary about new niche features cluttering and over complicating the UI, which is one of the great things about scripting, which can fill specific gaps for people that need it.

[Shebbe]

I can partially agree. In the same argument context however you could say, more native features doesn't require users to grab external tools for which most.

- you need to pay

- you are at the mercy of their support duration for future compatibility

- depending on the nature of the tool, sharing open files with other parties can be problematic

I think in this particular case having such a feature built in is not a bad thing. I can see myself using it as well.

[sskaz]

My trick to this is adding a controller layer with a checkbox to my main comp, then under all heavy effect instances, link the Compositing Options > Effect Opacity to it like so:

comp("main_v01").layer("controller").effect("Render FX")("Checkbox")*100

(The Compositing Options are only visible in the Timeline Panel at the very bottom of an effect, as seen in my screenshot.)

Unfortunately there’s no easy way to apply this project-wide. Here’s an opportunity for someone to make/sell a script to automate this. 

When an effect’s Compositing Options > Effect Opacity is 0%, AE will not process that effect at all. Other effects sometimes have their own Show Original/Opacity controls, but even these still add some processing overhead. In an effects heavy project, those milliseconds count!