After Effects Plugin Organization

[AubsTheBlix]

Knowing a great many artists that work across multiple different studios - plugin organization seems to be a shared frustration. I work at a studio which (like most) is equipped with several different workstations with artists working on multiple different projects simulatenously. Each system needs to be consistently updating/upgrading both plugins and the AE software itself to stay up to speed with the vendors we interact with. While also ensuring that artists have the ability to jump into any active project at a moments notice. 

That being said, plugin organization can get messy very quickly.  Is it possible to store Plugins in a Master directory (that lives outside of the AE application directory); than, within the System Preferences, point AE to said directory? Making the plugin master directory a constant while the software is the moving variable.

Any insights on whether or not this is possible or in development? Not being an engineer (nor having the admin permissions to move items around for experimentation) - I would be grateful for any feedback. Something like this would make things a heck of a lot easier in the troubleshooting stages.

Thanks, All!

[Mylenium]

Long and short: No, no and no. Never gonna happen. Doing so would require turning the whole plug-in architecture on its head for a million reasons.

Mylenium

[Warren Heaton]

Plug-in management is a challenge for sure, especially keeping multiple workstatations on the same versions of plug-ins.

In addition to the Plug-ins folder in the After Effects folder, there's the Media Core folder; however, that's not going to achieve what you're looking to do.

From the After Effects user guide:
After Effects also loads plug-ins from a MediaCore folder, which is intended to hold plug-ins shared between After Effects and Premiere Pro. Some third-party plug-in installers install their plug-ins in this folder. In general, unless specifically instructed to do so, don’t install plug-ins in the MediaCore folder. If you install a plug-in in this folder that is not supported by one or more of the applications that read from this folder, you may encounter errors or other problems.

The main challenge that you're facing is that many plug-ins are licensed for use with the instance of After Effects that it's installed with.  You're probably already keeping all of your installer downloads in the same folder.  In addition to that, someone (usually your IT person) should have a spreadsheet of serial numbers for each plug-in that's in use.

For anyone interested on reading more on plug-ins, here's a link to the user guide:

Using Plug-Ins

I've freelanced at places that limit what plug-ins can be usde, like included with AE and Boris Continuum Complete only.  Of course, that can feelvery restrictive.  I've also had the good forture of working at placing that simply have just about every last plug-in you can think of, but there's always an IT person to handle it so designers can focus on design.