AFTER EFFECTS WISHLIST

[Andrew Yoole]

What features would you like to see implemented in After Effects? New ideas for plugins? Interface changes? Post 'em here!

Let's keep bug identification to individual posts, as these will probably be addressed more readily. Let's use this thread for specific ideas about ways that AE can be improved and expanded.

These Forums are for users, not Adobe employees, so don't forget to also fill in an Adobe feature request form.

To view the Wish List posts prior to September 2009, look here.

[Guest]

How about making an effect that would "precompose" all of the effects above it. I would think this would be a big time saver for certain situations, considering all the time spent creating and navigating through precomps.

If I understand correctly what you want, it's there already. It's called CC Composite and lets you pick a mode in which all effects above of it are applied to the original footage item. It can save of layering and pre-Comping. For example, if you wanted to perform selective color correction, you could use any keing effect to isolate a color range, then apply a color correction effect to modify that range, and finally use CC Composite to overlay the keyed/modified range on top of the original content. It's really, really useful.

[Mark Moser]

How about  a way to "star" or "favorite" effects, even better, the ability to create custom bins that can store favored effects by whatever grouping I choose (like you can in Premiere)

[slipage]

capture for usb 2 capture devices to bring in analog vhs tapes, etc

[Dan Ramirez]

Thanks for all the great feedback guys! There are a lot of fantastic suggestions.

Dan Ramirez

AE QA Engineer

[Andy_Bay]

Still dreaming about the ability to use folders in the timeline. Photoshop can group layers inside folders and its a great feature. Encore can do the same. Why oh why can't After Effects?

[Todd_Kopriva]

> Still dreaming about the ability to use folders in the timeline. Photoshop can group layers inside folders and its a great feature. Encore can do the same. Why oh why can't After Effects?

Doing it badly is easy. Doing it right is more involved. I assume that you want us to do it right.

[John Stanowski]

Folders in the Timeline would probably be my Number 1 request. I would f'n love that.

[Todd_Kopriva]

>Folders in the Timeline would probably be my Number 1 request. I would f'n love that.

Then add a feature request here and describe exactly how you want it to work. Bonus points for considering exactly how render order, 3D interactions, blending modes, adjustment layers, and precompositions would work in this context.

Note that the entries made through that feature request form are far more direct and useful to us than conversation on this thread.

[Andy_Bay]

The way I see it, the timeline folders should simply be a way to show/hide groups of layers quickly. So render order should not be affected in any way. Blending modes and adjustment layers should work just like they work with Photoshops layer groups. The behaviour of precomps should not be affected, just render them like always, considering their stacking order in the timeline (or in case of 3D, their positions relative to each other). The way I imagine it, nothing really that big would have to be changed.

Ps. I added a feature request too.

[Mark Moser]

why not just "shy" them?

• Mark

[Mark Moser]

....unless by hide, you mean hide from the comp (eye switch) and not hide

them from the timeline panel.

• Mark

[Todd_Kopriva]

> The way I see it, the timeline folders should simply be a way to show/hide groups of layers quickly.

If that's all that you're trying to do, then why not use filtering in the Timeline panel, Zorro, label groups, or any of various other features that allow you to select, show, and interact with arbitrary sets of layers (not just ones that happen to be contiguous, as folders would require, unless you're going to change render order)?

[Todd_Kopriva]

BTW, John's #2 is where it gets more involved. Doing this right is not trivial. We want to do it, and we want to do it well. Make sure that your requirements for this are in your feature requests submitted through the official form.

John's #1 gets essentially the same question from me as Andy's comment.

[John Stanowski]

I still kinda think filtering and Zorro, etc. require more effort.

If I just finish working on a group of layers for a lower third (abstract footage, matte, text) I'd like to be able to right away make a "Shy Group". Currently all I can do at this point is assign a like color to all of the layers. But this just color codes my Timeline so things are clear as far as relationship. But it doesn't help with bringing layers which are far apart closer together.

If I want to filter or use Zorro then I would have to (don't laugh), think. And that slows me down. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with thinking, but I'd like to concentrate on the big picture and not a bunch of steps that simply expanding or collapsing a folder would take care of.

It's just faster. It's more convenient. And it's a better fit for how our minds work. And let's us get on with work.

[Andy_Bay]

Todd your tip of filtering is definetly a helpfull one . But still.. I think it has to do how John put it: having folders would take a certain amount of load out of our heads.

I could make secret agreements with myself that all the layers with red labels have to do with a certain element in the comp. But instead of trying to remember such labels or similar systems possibly months later, it would feel be more simple for me to put them inside a folder and then give that folder a meaningfull name. That way I wouldn't have to give my actual layers any special tags in their names in order to filter them, since giving the folder a name would be enough.

I also think I would use the folders mostly to hide layer groups I'm "done for a while" with. For purposes like that I think filtering doesn't work soo great. I mean I would first have to assign each layer that I still wanted to see some specific property and then filter that property. I use the shy switch a lot but it's not very much fun either when a comp starts having tens of shy layers with only the option to show them all or hide them all.

Oh and John, I love your second idea of precomp folders!

[Todd_Kopriva]

> But instead of trying to remember such labels or similar systems possibly months later, it would feel be more simple for me to put them inside a folder and then give that folder a meaningfull name

What's wrong with putting the tag name in the Comments field? If you create a folder named 'BOX' and add the layers to it, you're doing the same mental work as adding the tag 'BOX' in the Comment field for each layer. But the tags in the Comments fields are far, far more flexible, since they don't depend on layer order, you can have one layer in more than one set, et cetera.

Please, humor me. Try Zorro. If you don't love it, feel free to heap scorn on me for suggesting it.

[John Stanowski]

Methinks: It's not the same amount of mental work or even clicks. First we'd have to open the Comments column. Then manually enter in a tag on each layer. Lotsa clicks and typing (or pasting). Then, we'd have to enter in tags for filtering as we go.

If we made a new "folder" or "shy group" all we have to do it highlight the layers and drag them in.

What if we want to shy a bunch of "groups". We'd have to remember all the tags. And multiple ones at that. (Unless we leave that column open but who has room for that?)  And then type them into the field.

With folders or shy groups we'd have twirlies.

[John Stanowski]

I also want to say it's likely a matter of different strokes. There's different kinds of workflows people use and they have different needs. I've mostly been making broadcast spots lately and I'm running into issues where my suggestions make sense to me. I can see how someone who does only compositing and such might not see the value of some of these ideas. Just sayin'.

[John Stanowski]

Zorro is great but it's still more work. What if we want to hide multiple groups? We'd have to punch all that in. And Zorro completely shys things.

I should have said: my suggestion for "shy groups/folders" would allow the Folder itself to remain visible. Just the contents would be collapsed. This way we know that "something is there" and where it is in the order of things.

[John Stanowski]

Will do. But I'll post here first for peer review.

I suggest 2 fundamentally different types of "folders". One to simply clear up the Timeline. And the second would be a new way to work with PreComps.

1. Clutter (Shy) Folders. I think it would be awesome to make a folder in the Timeline that was for visual purposes only. This type of folder would have absolutely no effect on render order, etc. It's sole purpose would be to hide groups of consecutive layers under a single name which could be expanded or collapsed.

I often get dizzy looking at some of the layer stacks I've created. This addition would really help clear up the clutter. And I think there's a real need too. Often I'll have a layer near the top of my stack, something controlling a camera for example. And way down the stack I'd have layers with keyframes which have a direct correlation to keyframes on a higher layer, one that could quite possibly be out of view because the window isn't large enough to show all the layers at once. Being able to "group" groups of layers inbetween and collapse them visually would allow me to see the 2 layers I need to compare against.

Again, this type of "folder" is just visual. Kind of like soloing. It would have a unique layer icon. The layers "inside" that folder could have a tiny icon, a bent arrow, like Photoshop's "I'm clipped to the layer below icon. This would automatically visually "indent" a layer name but just one or two characters and not take up much room.

Yes, this may be confusing for some. Perhaps to keep it clear, they could be called "Shy Groups" to push the fact that even though some layers are "grouped" into a folder, that it's for clutter purposes only. The fact that they are in this kind of "folder" does not affect render order. Everything works exactly the same as it would had they not been placed into this kind of folder.

Using the Shy feature available now is nice, but can be cumbersome. It would be a load off my mind if I were able to "group" consecutive layers that have a relationship.

2. Precomp "Folders". This is a way of providing the layers of a precomp within the main timeline. By default they would be collapsed so that we see the precomp layer as we usually do, as one layer. But, we'd have the ability to open this "folder" and see the layers contained in that precomp in direct relation to the rest of timeline of the comp which contains it.

This would be fantastic when it comes to moving keyframes around.

Yes, this gets sticky. What if you open a precomp the usual way, which you should, of course, still be able to do. Don't know. Maybe moving layers and keyframes in either the precomp itself or in it's folder in the main comp simply mirror each other. Not sure of the programming hurdles this would cause. Though I do think, since it would be so useful, users wouldn't mind having to "activate" the feature so that the program isn't burdened with constantly keeping track of everything. Or maybe opening a precomp while a precomp folder is open in a parent comp would simply produce a message "this precomp is open for editing in the main comp" and then get an option to switch control back to the precomp.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense. But if this were made to work, it would be a JOY to work with precomps.

[bogiesan-gyyClL]

Sheesh, I've got to unsubscribe form this thread. I cannot help but wonder where this discussion would be going if more of us had begun your motion graphics careers with AEv2.1 or AEv3.0.

I don't need anything added to AE. Fix the few things that are broken and contiue to work toward standardizing the interfaces among all of the apps.

Y'all let me know when AE CS6 is ready to ship.

bogiesan

[ManndarrPat]

Hello all,

ONE SIMPLE IMPROVEMENT for PS into AE,which will help me to make high quality 3d broadcast graphics,

please improve the PS 3D feature so I can import PS 3D layers in AE not as 2D but as real 3D itself. like import from other 3D apps....

[Navarro_Parker]

In the prefs, change "CPUs reserved for other applications"  to either "Cores" or "Threads" reserved.

CPU is a bit of an antiquated term in today's multicore world, no?

[Navarro_Parker]

Arstechnica implies that because Nuke uses a scanline renderer like a 3D app, its multicore performance scales better than AE.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/10/tri-screen-cpu-monitor-ars-reviews-the-12-core-2010-mac-pro.ars/

So how about a scanline (or bucket) renderer for AE?  (It would also lend itself well to AE render farms too)

A completely new and modern render engine. How hard can that be?

(Then again, look what the Premiere Nvidia team came up with -- Mercury! So it's not impossible)

[dhuacuja]

I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN AFTER EFFECTS,  A COMPOSITON MARKER COLOR OPTION.  IT WILL BE NICE IF I CAN SEE IN MY TIMELINE SOME "DIVISIONS" MORE VISIBLE TO ME WITH THESE MARKERS,   LIKE IF I COULD MARK SOME FIELDS,

BECAUSE WE USUALLY APPLY MORE THAN 300 LAYERS IN A ROW, SO... I HAVE SEPARATE LAYERS IN DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF MY TIMELINE..

IF I COULD VISUALIZE THOSE SECTIONS IN THE TOP OF MY COMPOSITION MARKERS, IT WILL BE MORE EASY TO ME , WHERE I HAVE TO WORK ON.

THANKS